Part 14

It is a splendid thing to live in the twentieth century. The young people who enter life these days are going out into the busiest world there has ever been. Never has the need of strong, capable, intelligent women been so great. The bond of fellowship which unites each one of us to the whole human race is to be recognized in the future as never before. Women of the future are to demand of themselves almost all that was demanded of the women of the past and much more, and they will be equal to the demands because of more highly trained intelligence.

The greatest temptation of the average young woman to-day in our better classes of society is to listen too willingly to the winsome voice of pleasure. I do not mean wrong kinds of pleasure; I mean those that are in themselves harmless. Nor do I mean that it is desirable that youth should lose any of its natural joy and gladness. The world can ill spare any of that. But the continual giving-up of ourselves to things that leave no lasting impress for good, and that do not lift us above ourselves, robs us of time and strength that should be given to the main business of life.

"The great wrong in modern life," says Professor James, "is a desperate struggle for a four-cornered contentment. Teach those who come your way that it is not a formal peace which is worth having in life; it is the deep consciousness of power to create and progress, to create new in life, and to live for wide, free, unsullied things, which never fail and never can decay."

The Riverside Press CAMBRIDGE · MASSACHUSETTS U · S · A