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    Talks to Freshman Girls
    Talks to Freshman Girls
    Talks to Freshman Girls
    Ebook57 pages45 minutes

    Talks to Freshman Girls

    By Helen Dawes Brown

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    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArchive Classics
    Release dateNov 26, 2013
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      Book preview

      Talks to Freshman Girls - Helen Dawes Brown

      The Project Gutenberg EBook of Talks to Freshman Girls, by Helen Dawes Brown

      This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with

      almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or

      re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included

      with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net

      Title: Talks to Freshman Girls

      Author: Helen Dawes Brown

      Release Date: September 3, 2011 [EBook #37299]

      Language: English

      *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TALKS TO FRESHMAN GIRLS ***

      Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed

      Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was

      produced from images made available by the HathiTrust

      Digital Library.)

      By Helen Dawes Brown

      HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY

      Boston and New York

      TALKS TO

      FRESHMAN GIRLS

      BY

      HELEN DAWES BROWN

      Author of Two College Girls

      BOSTON AND NEW YORK

      HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY

      The Riverside Press Cambridge

      1914

      COPYRIGHT, 1914, BY HELEN DAWES BROWN

      ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

      Published September 1914

      TALKS TO FRESHMAN GIRLS

      I—STUDIES SERVE FOR DELIGHT, FOR ORNAMENT, AND FOR ABILITY

      No man could have written this sentence with more authority than Francis Bacon, for no man ever loved Studies better. In his youth he had declared passionately that he took all knowledge for his province, and it was his lifelong teaching that the sovereignty of man lieth hid in knowledge.

      Studies serve for delight, for ornament, and for ability. I imagine Bacon writing these words with fervor, out of his own happy experience. At the age of thirty-five, he could determine what Studies had been worth to him. They had been his delight, his ornament, and the means to his usefulness.

      For delight he wrote in his first edition pastimes, as he wrote ornaments and abilities, then wisely changed his sentence. His beautiful old word delight means, I take it, a heightened pleasure, a pleasure touched with imagination, full of suggestion and invitation.

      I have a far glimpse of its meaning when I hear a young person say that she is going to college to have a good time; a good time for the rest of her life is what, I believe, Studies will secure to her. You are so young, I may speak to you of age. There is a new old age for women, with enlightened care of health and increasing intellectual interests. As for you freshmen, I have a vision of your erect forms and of your bright faces at seventy-five,—of your health and your gayety and your wisdom, you charming old ladies of 1970! Age cannot wither you, nor custom stale your infinite variety, you women whom Studies have served for delight.

      And you are so happy that I may speak to you of unhappiness. We need three things to meet life with: a religion, an education, and a sense of humor. The pursuit of Studies is a refuge as well as a delight. Studies will fortify one to encounter loneliness, or ill-health, or losses of any kind soever. The chances of life are such that I believe a woman suffers from lack of an education more than a man does. He has a wider world to draw from; she has need of more within herself. When Bacon writes of the care of the body, he says that for our very health, we should entertain studies that fill the mind with splendid and illustrious objects.

      In order that knowledge should be a delight, I submit that knowledge should be remembered. A certain man George Eliot describes, who had a sense of having had a liberal education until he tried to remember something! The culture of some people seems to consist in having heard a large number of proper names.

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