The Universalist. [volume] (Chicago [Ill.]) 1884-1897, 1896-06-27
MESSAGES FOR GIRLS.

II YIN
Young women, the glory of your life
is to do something and to be something.
You, very possibly, may have formed the
idea that ease and personal enjoyment
are the ends of your life. This is great
mistake. Development, in the broadcast
sense and in the highest direction. is the
end of your life. Ease is not for you.
Selfish enjoyment is not for you. The
world is to be made better by you. You
have got to suffer and to work; and if
there be spark of the true girl in you,
your hearts will respond to these words.
The time will come when you shall see
that all your toll. and care, and pain, and
sorrow, and practical sympathy for
others. have built you up into strength
of womanhood which will despise ease
as an end of lie. and pity those who are
content with it.
when you have properly compre-
hended and received this idea, the rec
reations of life and the pleasures of So
cial intercourse will take their appropri-
ate positions with relation to the bust
ness of life-its staple duties. Recrea.
ton will become recreation simply the
revival of your powers that they may all
the better perform the work which you
have undertaken, or which circum-
stances have devolved upon you. So
cial pleasure will rise into a sympathe-
tic communion with nature and lives
earnest like your own, upon the subjects
nearest your hearts. and it will give you
thought and guidance.
"Do not seek for yourselves any prom
inent field of service where you will at
tract the attention of the world Re-
main where God places you. Some of
the noblest heroisms of the world have
been achieved in humble life. The poor
you have always with you. The misera-
BILE are always around you. You can
tighten your fathers burdens. You can
restrain your brothers from vicious So
ciety. You can relieve your failing and
fading mother of much care. You can
gather ragged and ignorant children at
your knee. and teach them something of
better life than they have seen. You
can become angels Of light and goodness
to many stricken hearts. You can read
to the aged. You can do many things
which will be changed to blessings upon
your own soul. Florence Nightingale
did her work in her place; do your work
in yours, and your Father who seeth in
secret shall reward you openly.
II would be the last one to cast
shadow on your brows, but | would I'M
deceive you at the first, so that you may
begin life with right ideas. Life is real
it is real and earnest thing. 1t has home
ly details, painful passages and a crown
of care for every brow. | seek to inspire
you with a wish and will to meet il
with womanly spirit. l seek to point
you to it's nobler meanings and it's high
or results. The tinsel, with which your
imagination has invested it, will fall off
of itself, so soon as you shall fairly enter
upon its experiences. Then il these
ideas have no place in you. you will be
obliged to acquire them slowly and pain
fully or you will sink into poor, selfish,
discontinued creature. So | say, begin
to take up life's duties now. Learn some
thing of what life is, before you take up
on yourself the graver responsibilities.
"Your happiness is very much in your
own hands, so are your usefulness and
your good name. do not ask you to be
anything but glad. sunny woman. l
would have you so at peace with Hea-
ven, with the world, and with yourself
that tears shall flow only at the call of
sympathy. l would have you immacu
late as light, devoted to all good deeds,
industrious. intelligent, patient, heroic.
And browning every grace of person and
mind, every accomplishment, every
noble sentiment, every womanly faculty.
every delicate instinct, every true i'm
pulse | would see religion upon your
brow-the coronet by token of which
God makes you princess 10 his family,
and an heir to the brightest glories. the
sweetest pleasures. the noblest privi-
leges. and the highest honors of his
kingdom" DIR. Holland.