Part 5

Another thought that may help us to adjust ourselves to the hard things in our lives is that it takes some losses, some disappointments and sorrows to make us appreciate the good things that we have. Youth is wasteful, not realizing its riches. It always remains true that what we do not realize does not exist, for us. A part of the law of compensation is that the more we lose, the more highly we prize what is left. That, perhaps, is the greatest compensation for growing older. Though the relentless years have taken away much to which we clung with tenacity, yet, somehow, we have come to place so high a valuation upon what remains that we often grow happier in spite of persistent and increasing losses. In the old story of the Sibylline Books, there is a thought of very wide application.

How little do we know which paths lead to happiness and success! We are sure, however, that we do know and rebel at the least deviation from the road we had marked out. Yet again and again a Power wiser than ourselves changes the direction of the path, and compels us to travel a different and unwelcome way. Afterward, looking back, we often realize that the best things life has brought us have come along that road of the defeat of cherished plans. These words of Emerson should be taken to heart by every young person who is having a severe struggle or who is passing through fiery trials:--

"We cannot part with our friends. We cannot let our angels go. We do not know that they only go out, that archangels may come in. A fever, a mutilation, a cruel disappointment, a loss of wealth, a loss of friends, seems at the moment unpaid loss, and unpayable. But the sure years reveal the deep remedial force that underlies all facts. The death of a dear friend, wife, brother, lover, which seemed nothing but privation, somewhat later assumes the aspect of a guide or genius; for it commonly operates revolutions in our way of life, terminates an epoch of infancy or of youth which was waiting to be closed, breaks up a wonted occupation, or a household, or style of living, and allows the formation of new ones more friendly to the growth of character. It permits or constrains the formation of new acquaintances, and the reception of new influences that prove of the first importance to the next years; and the man or woman who would have remained a sunny garden-flower, with no room for its roots and too much sunshine for its head, by the falling of the walls and the neglect of the gardener is made the banyan of the forest, yielding shade and fruit to wide neighborhoods of men."

VII

SCHOOL SPIRIT

Among the forces which shape young men and women in our educational institutions, none is more potent than that indefinable, intangible, powerful thing we call school spirit, or college spirit, as the case may be. Students are often mistaken in the expression of it, but the spirit is right, though the expression may be wrong. School spirit always represents an unselfish attitude of the student. He has heard the call of something larger than himself.

Though school spirit may be only a sentiment, it is that which gives its deepest richness to the life of a good school. It belongs to an epoch in the life of the student that can never be repeated and never forgotten. It is the source, not only of much of the truest happiness of the precious school days, but of stimulus to high endeavor.

While there are many day schools that have a fine and strong school spirit, it reaches its height only in those schools and colleges where the students live a common corporate life, away from their homes and other influences which tend to separate them instead of unite them. Such communities foster the closeness and intimacy necessary to that complete solidarity essential for strong school spirit.

Many things operate to draw the members of a student body together. The games and sports, the fun and frolic, are shared by all. The work, if not the same, is done under the same conditions. All inherit the common school traditions and the same ideals of life are put before all. These things tend to eliminate distinctions and to make for democracy. In short, they foster school spirit.

The life of a corporate group is something different from the lives of the individuals who compose it. The members of such a group act and react upon one another. Their impulses and emotions, their words and even their deeds take different tone and shape when in the midst of numbers of others similarly circumstanced. There is a latent fire in the soul which is fanned to flame by the contact of life with life. This infection of nature by nature operates for evil as well as for good. Its harmful influence is seen at its worst in what is called mob spirit or mob rule. The mob may be guilty of deeds which not a single individual in it would countenance if left to himself.

By the mere fact of your coming together, then, surrounded by the same influences, under the spell of the same traditions and ideals, you create an element of life which did not exist before and which reacts powerfully upon every one of you. This is of the greatest importance in the growth of character, especially in these formative years. If you are ever to come to complete self-realization, you must breathe the atmosphere of pure and wholesome social influences. You should ask yourself, then, concerning the joint social life which you are living from day to day, what you are gathering from it and what you are contributing to it.

As I stood once in the chapel of Eton College, England, I noticed upon the walls certain scrolls and tablets containing hundreds of names in letters of gold. These were the names of graduates of Eton who had in after years brought distinction to their college. I noticed the same family names, recurring over and over again, and I was told that these same names are still upon the school rolls. I could not help asking myself, How can any young man who enters Eton, bearing one of these honored names, be anything but his best self? His family, his school, his country expect it. Perhaps that is one reason he so often _is_ his best and that the same families generation after generation have so large a share of good and great men. And I thought, too, what a stimulus there must be in the very atmosphere of that splendid, five-hundred-year-old school, to spur these young men on to their highest endeavor! They were honored in being members of Eton and they in turn must honor Eton.

In this country we have no schools as old as Eton; yet all good schools have their fine traditions. The true-hearted service of noble lives has gone into the making of them. Of all such schools it may be said that among their sons or daughters are those who have loved their _Alma Mater_ so well that being a credit to her they have counted among their chief aims in life. Only the student who is moved by such motives as these has the true school spirit. Such a student longs that his school shall be stamped with the stamp of true worthiness.

I suppose the most evident, certainly the most picturesque, exhibition of school spirit is to be seen in connection with athletics, and it reaches its climax in an inter-school game. The authorities of some schools say frankly that they permit such games, with their interruption of serious work and other disadvantages, chiefly because they tend to develop school spirit and school loyalty. Athletic contests are good, for they give training in self-subordination, self-control, alertness, and dogged perseverance. The individual loses himself in the good of the whole. This makes for character and good citizenship. We must not underestimate the value of the enthusiasm which comes from rallying against a common antagonist. When the rivalry is good-natured and every rule of fair play is observed, the effect is wholesome.

Yet it is not always the student who cheers most loudly for the team and who is most carried away by school spirit on public occasions who is at heart most loyal to the school. There is a greater loyalty even than that generous spirit which prompts one to rejoice in victory. It is the desire that one's school shall stand only for that which is right. It is the determination that it shall be respected, and still more, that it shall be worthy of respect.

Now, the first and most obvious thing about any school is that it is an educational institution, and as such it must stand or fall. If a school is an educational failure, what avails its success in some subordinate thing? No one can take pride in an easy-going school to which any one can gain admission, and in which any one can remain, regardless of attainment. Students are not likely to think of this aspect of the case when they neglect their studies. They think the matter wholly personal and believe that only they are the sufferers. It is not so. By slack, indifferent work you are lowering the standard of your school, and you are thus disloyal. By your act you say that you do not care to have your school respected. This shows a lack of a sense of indebtedness on your part to the corporate group of which you are a member. It means a failure to apply school spirit where it was most needed. It is easier to sing and cheer on some moving occasion, but which does your school need more at your hands?

What I have said about upholding the intellectual standards of the school applies equally to its standards in other matters. By your dress, by your manners, by your behavior you indicate, wherever you go, the character of your school. You are its product. The world does not stop to ask what is going on inside of a school or what its influences are. The world judges a school by its results. If you want your school to be respected you cannot be too careful to represent it worthily at all times and in all places.

You come to school to get knowledge, but it would be a pity if that were all you were to get. A young man and a young woman, each of whom had been out of college several years, were discussing the advantages of a college education. One said to the other, "Looking back over your college days, what do you now regard as the most valuable thing you got out of college?" "Inspiration," promptly came the answer; and both were agreed upon this.

School days deal with an earlier period of life than the college age, when the student is usually more susceptible to strong influences. The school that first gave you the determination to do something worth while in the world, the school that called forth your best self and set your heart on fire with a noble purpose, has a claim upon you that you can never forget.

Every school that has this transforming power is what it is by virtue of the personalities that have been connected with it. Ask yourself what you are doing to make your school in the future as inspiring a place for others as others have made it for you. Ask yourself what you can contribute to the enrichment of the life of your school. Be not over-anxious about what you shall receive.

Students rarely realize how much they leave behind them when they depart from a school. Something of you remains, mysteriously interwoven in the life of the school. "I am a part of all that I have met," says Tennyson's Ulysses. Just as you embody in yourself the influences that hundreds of other lives have exerted upon you, so others are bearing and will always bear the marks of your influence.

To be a worthy member of a good school is a great privilege, furnishing as it does a stimulus to high endeavor which rarely comes in any other way. It is a distinct honor to sustain and enhance a worthy name. If you have the right school spirit, you can do nothing less than throw all the power of your influence into the task of making your school a place where future students may learn how to meet and be true to the responsibilities and obligations of life. The atmosphere which makes easy this kind of growth is created only by living personalities, by the touch of life upon life.

VIII

MAKING THE BEST OF THINGS

I have noticed that many people who seem to the casual observer to be favorites of fortune, having no large and serious troubles to worry about, so magnify their small ones that life loses much of its joy. Most men and women who rebel at their lot in life fancy that their discontent lies in the deprivation of some definite thing. Had it not been for this or that unfavorable condition, their lives would have been happy and successful. One possesses too small a share of this world's goods and continually allows his thoughts to dwell upon what he might have had or might have done if he had been blessed with wealth. He forgets to appreciate and to be grateful for health, family, friends, and a host of other blessings. He has the lurking feeling that wealth is the one thing which would have made his life happy, in spite of the fact that he knows that it has not brought happiness to many who possess it. So he settles down to a discontented, second-rate life.

With another, it is a lack of robust health that causes discontent. Such a person forgets that much of the best work of the world has been accomplished by men of frail health, as, for instance, Darwin and Herbert Spencer. Another finds a source of unhappiness in his environment in life, or in a lack of particular advantages and opportunities. He is sure that he might have become an artist or a musician or a scholar had not Fate been so unkind as to deprive him of opportunity. Yet we have but to point to scores of persons who have won the highest success in these fields in spite of seemingly insurmountable obstacles.

Some women are unhappy because they cannot obtain the position in society for which they believe themselves fitted; others crave luxury and ease denied them. Many women long to exchange their idleness for a work in life. As to work, it sometimes seems as if half the workers of the world are envying the other half their particular field of labor. Each sees the advantages of the other's task, but not its disadvantages. The laboring man envies the business or professional man the supposed ease of his work and its larger returns. The business or professional man often looks with envy upon the day laborer, because of his freedom from care and the simplicity of his life. And so each looks over the edge of his work, discontented, to that of his neighbor. How seldom are we willing to admit that the cause of our discontent lies within ourselves!

It is true that there is a discontent which is right. It is discontent with what we _are_ and it is born of aspiration. One who feels this divine discontent well knows that his life has not been as fruitful as it should have been, and he is determined that the future shall redeem, as far as possible, the inadequacy of the past. He says with Whittier:--

"I better know than all How little I have gained, How vast the unattained!"

If ever we find ourselves satisfied with our attainments it simply means that we have a very low standard of success. Some one has said, "One should never believe that he has succeeded, but always that he is going to succeed."

To be discontented with what we have, that is, with our possessions and our circumstances, is a very different matter. Either we can change them or we cannot. If we can and do not, we have only ourselves to blame. But what shall be said regarding those unfavorable outward circumstances of your life to which you must submit? Simply this: If you cannot have what you like, _learn to like what you have_. Resolve that no unfavorable conditions shall be powerful enough to defeat you and spoil your life. Master your circumstances instead of letting them master you. To master circumstances does not necessarily mean to change them. Sometimes it means merely to change our attitude toward them, so that they may become a source of strength instead of weakness. There is always much that a wise and energetic person can do to change the conditions of his life, yet there will be left in every life certain things that cannot be altered. The real test of our character is our attitude toward these things.

There is nothing more certain than that if you are going to accomplish anything in life you must use the vantage-ground you have, not the better vantage-ground of another, which is not yours. Do not explain what you would have done if you had had this one's or that one's opportunity. You will be tested by the use you make of the opportunities that have been given to _you_.

It is sometimes pointed out that too many college girls, returning to their homes after graduation, lead restless, discontented lives. The college is often blamed for this, but most unjustly. The difficulty may be with the girl herself, but I believe it is just as often with her family and friends, who expect impossible things of her. Too often an active, ambitious girl is forced to settle down into a life of comparative uselessness. The inspiration of her college years is still strong upon her. All the powers of heart, mind, and soul have been awakened. She has gained a wide outlook, and the needs of this very needy world have been brought home to her sympathetic heart. She feels within her the power to do something which will count in making the world a better place. To be a mere household ornament does not seem to her adequate. Too frequently there is the strongest objection to her taking up any definite work. She is expected to be happy in comparative idleness and without the stimulus that always comes from feeling that one's life is counting for something. Some of the discontent of the educated young woman who has not yet found her place in life may be traced to these causes.

Yet sometimes her discontent has its root in herself, and is due to a lack of adaptation. Many a young woman who leaves school or college with dreams of an inspiring and useful work in the world finds herself obliged to remain at home because of family necessity. She may even have to live in a place apparently devoid of interest, amid surroundings that seem commonplace, with no stimulating or congenial companionship. Sometime you may find yourself in exactly that position. What will you do about it? Will you adopt a course that will not only make those about you miserable, but will dwarf and narrow your own life? Or can you be brave and strong enough to follow the path that will enlarge and beautify your life as well as bring good to others? If you are in doubt what to do, ask yourself what an Alice Freeman Palmer would have done with those meager surroundings, those narrow opportunities and uninspiring duties. You know the answer. A great soul like hers would have created its own atmosphere and soon the desert would have blossomed as the rose. She would have seen possibilities in the dreariest situation. She would have found work to do in the smallest and most uninteresting community. Wherever there is a community there is work to be done--little children to be guided into right ways, the sick to be visited, the discouraged to be cheered. Wherever you find a church, there is an opportunity for service. Who ever heard of a church that had workers enough? Wherever there is a city, town, or village, there is work to be done in the direction of civic betterment.

Is your life restricted by certain responsibilities not of your own choosing, yet from which you cannot honorably escape--nay, would not escape? Do you long for freedom, for the power to carve out your own destiny in your own way? How swiftly you would move forward if you could tread the path of your own choosing! Do not think that you are unusual in this longing. It is difficult to be reconciled to the limitations placed upon us. Those of whom you are most envious are probably in their turn envying others who have not their particular limitations. Some of them may be envying you. A lesson which we should all learn as early as possible is that the restrictions of our lives often point the way to largeness. Whenever we find ourselves indulging in self-pity because of the limitations under which we labor, it will be well to call to mind some of the many splendid and fruitful lives that have attained to strength and power in spite of restrictions far more severe, or rather partly because of them: Lincoln, gaining a meager knowledge of books by the light of a pine knot; Darwin, doing his life-work in the face of physical disabilities that would have made useless invalids of most of us; Helen Keller, denied all the most important avenues of communication with the outside world, yet achieving results that would put most of us to shame; Louisa M. Alcott, writing her charming stories in the midst of arduous toil and pathetic privations endured for the sake of her loved ones; and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, learning from suffering what she told the world in song. History is full of these examples, and the future will be just as rich in such lives as the past has been. Those who are to be the leaders of the next generation are even now, many of them, having a severe struggle with adverse circumstances.

Just as we should make the best of the things about us and of the circumstances of our lives, so we should make the best of the people about us. Must you live apart from the friends whose society is most congenial to you? Again, if you cannot have about you the people you like, then like the people you have about you. It is astonishing how much progress can be made when one starts out with resolution in this direction. Try it and you will be amazed at discovering likable qualities in those with whom you supposed you had little in common.

And just as you are to make the best of other people, so you should learn to make the best of yourself. By this I do not mean make the _most_ of yourself. It goes without saying that one should do that. Many a person who is successful in matching himself against outward obstacles feels discouraged when he faces his own nature and recognizes the return of faults which he hoped he had overcome. No struggle is so severe as that which one wages with himself. Sometimes we become disheartened at our failure to conquer faults and to overcome wrong tendencies. When it is a question of right and wrong, there is no course open to us but to continue to wage the battle. No compromise with wrong is possible.

Yet there are other limitations which should be regarded in a different light. Perhaps we have overestimated our capacity and have expected the impossible of ourselves. Paris is full of discouraged artists who had looked forward to a noteworthy career that never can be realized. Every publisher of books has some comprehension of the enormous number of would-be authors there are of whom the world will never hear. Ambition is good, but disappointed ambition too often embitters life. Most of us have some limitations which cannot be removed. Certain of these limitations it is well to accept and not beat one's wings forever against the bars.