The Intermountain Catholic. (Salt Lake City [Utah] ;) 1899-1920, 1900-05-26

J. CONVENT SCHOOLS, BY REV
THOMAS H. MALONE.
June that month of rare days" ha.
come in our time to be a month of wed
dings and commandments" On every
L side the ear is greeted with pealina
bells and resounding marches and
words of cheer and congratulations;
and the eye is charmed with passing
visions OF Powered lovliness and dainty
dresses of joyous white and faces fair
and fresh and aglow with happiness
and serenity. All nature seems to
conspire to surround youth with the
bluest skies. and fairest flowers, and
the sweetest song that your lives will
ever come to know. Truly, the mea-
dOws of youth are asphodel. And you,
D looking out upon the expanding plain
/, of life that lies before you, are eager
to immerge into that larger and fuller
life that invites you-your young hearts
bouyant with hope, your imaginations
filled with the fancies of youth, and
your souls intrepid and valiant, albeit
We untried.
And your teacher and your parents,
1 ny wv al NcNiSl III VIII lIe JIleCIlOn
of your glad, young spirits and share
in your joys and your hopes and your
aspirations. But their hearts, glad
though they be, are chastened and sub
dued by thoughts and recoIlections in
/ which you can have no part; and a
suspicious moisture bedims their eyes,
even while their faces are wreathed
with smiles of pleasure and pride. The
future, so unknown to you, is a past to
them. They know what it has in store;
they know the sternness of real. life.
Its pitfalls and its snares; they know
the disenchantments and the heart
aches and the soul struggles that await
you. Their hopes are, mayhap, tinged
with fears to which your untried souls
are strangers; and their prayers for
your future have an awful solemnity
about them.
| about them. And I, too, am i'm
pressed with a sense of solemnity |
as l look into that future so soon to I
become for you living present, and |
then dead, irrivocable past. Into this |
academic and protected retreat of |
yours, in which you have been permit
ted to spend the blessed years of your
early youth, withdrawn from the soul
sitting atmosphere of a workaday
world. I come to bid you welcome
not to gardens of ease nor to palaces
of pleasure, but into the ranks of that
vast army of men and women who.
all about you, are bearing the heat
and burden of the day, and who. strong
IN faith, and in hope and in love are
toiling on resisting the allurements of
evil. and struggling with hand and with
brain to bring about the kingdom of
God upon earth.
The phrase THE Problem of Life
has doubtless a familiar sound to you;
you have probably been often Impress
ed, vaguely, with sense of its signi-
hcance, you have possibly thought over
Its meaning and, mayhap, even done
an essay or two upon it. You are soon
to have its deepest meaning brought
home to you, soon to know its length
and its breadth and depth; it is to
become to you the awful riddle of the
Sphinx which you must solve or meet
destruction. And alas for you and alas
Tor me, the problem that in our day
confronts us is a more tangled one .
than ever confronted the race before.
Life has become more complex, more )
more terrible if L may so saw.
than it was in earlier days than ours. ;
1t has become commonplace that we
live more rapidly than our ancestors. :
that fifty years of Europe" outruns !,
a cycle of Cathay". But the real char n
of modern life does not lie h
n this. Complexity rather than rapid f,
~ OF movement is the distinctive fea- a
-ure of the social mechanism of orr g
lay. A century ago life was COMPARE q
lively simple thing, a simple faith u
md pure heart alone sufficed for fac Ii
ng 1t bravely and successfully. Espec- e!
ally was this true of woman. Hers was Ia
he home and the fireside She had her ii
ares and her burdens as she has had q
lnee the beginning. But the fierc4 o,
truggle against the outer world was a,
pared her; the man faced that and in
hielded her. Today this is less true w
he home and the freside have not %;
eased to be woman's peculiar prov h,
nee, for this must ever remain. unless y,
he race be condemned to lose its in +,
tlnct Tor home and family. But TODAY gs
'oman has been thrust forth into a Of
usy world, and has to stand shoulder os
shoulder with the more rugged man: or
nd at his side, often weak and faint in
lg though she be, has to stagger on eli
mad, Notwithstanding. soul-de- -
-roying struggle for daily bread ~
Whether we like it or not the fact 49,
-ares us in the face that our day is y,
itnessing a change in the status of ar
omen such as the world has hardly WI
cen before. We may mourn over it if oil
e choose, we may deprecate it as an M
vii for her and for the race. and we ie,
lay sigh and we may pray and we of
lay labor for a return of other DAVIS or
hen it was not so. But our signs and w,
lr prayers and our labors are apt to we
rove alike in vain; for we cannot fic
ring back those dear, dead days" su
} utterly have they passed beyond re- w;
III, nor am I at all certain that we su
ish Alright in this. The study of the no
story of the growth of our race war SCI
lnts the belief that we are entering an
pom some new, and we may hope. bet dill
r phase of cur race development: and ms
7e now in one of those transition pc hi,
1u9 ~ "iiioh we cannot ADJUST our m;
lives quickly enough to a rapidly 10
hanging condition of growth, and in he
nsequence incongruity and absence Va
harmony so stand out as to make III,
at first glance imagine that the ~,
ign of chaos was about to come Nv;
cain. -,