Waterbury evening Democrat., 1906-04-19
BY MARGARET E. sANGsrER.


 Copyright, 1906, by Joseph B. Bowles)
 I have always been interested in composite photographs. The view not so much of an individual as of group merged into an individual, has fea- lures that awaken thought. Looking over the classroom and meeting the bright faces of 25 girls. each is as diff ferent from the other as if she be- longed to another species, and still each has likeness to the other as marked as the likeness of peas in pod.
 Josephine, Katherine, Barbara, Az nes, Mary, Evelyn, run through the catalogue of beautiful names, and match them with their sweet posses sors, and you are impressed with the variations in type. Let composite photograph of the class present itself to you, and you behold single type, and that type taken one year will not be in the least the type of another year, or of seven years to come. Girls of the same general appearance and age will be attending school seven years hence, yet a composite photo- graph taken of them will not be repetition of the one taken of your class this year. Shadowy, elusive, fit ting resemblances one sees in the class photograph to this and the other girl, but on the whole, new and charming character attracts you and you see not single personality, but the personality of a class. As I sometimes stand on a school platform, or behind the desk in a chapel where rows of schoolgirls, or college students. make beautiful pie ture before my eyes, get the thought of composite photograph. One of the very best things your school life and work are doing for you, girls, is not the training of your minds and memories, not the giving you ac- quaintance with facts and theories, but the formation in you of strong and noble womanhood. Your angles and roughnesses are being rubbed away and smoothed by contact with others. Katherine, for instance, though charming, is naturally imperi- ous and self-absorbed. She is the only daughter and her parents and bro thers have combined to indulge her caprices and spoil her by their readi- ness to grant her every wish. She needs fully as much some lessons in yielding to others, in accepting now and then the second place instead of the first, and Tn gentleness and amia- bility, as she needs training in alge- bra and physics.
 Agnes is much too unselfsh. She runs her feet of at home on errands for everybody. She gives up her own will go readily that people forget to thank her for daily sacrifices, and she is in much danger of being over looked and taken at her own valuation in world where most of us have to hold our own, or be pushed aside. At school her teachers appreciate her true worth and are very ready to see that others treat her fairly. She is not permitted to efface herself on every possible occasion.
 Mary is deficient in sympathy. She has no art of putting herself in the place of friend. Barbara is 100 sen- timental. She is given to exaggera- tion and gush, but is extremely super ficial. Each girl has in herself some quality that is xeTy desirable, but no girl has all the quaffesss that go to make
 "The perfect woman, nobly planned,
 To warn, to comfort and command.
 For this reason, if for no other. 1t is a misfortune for most girls to be taught at home. as is the fashion in a few exclusive families. A governess in the house is a comfort to the moth- CT and a great help in the training of the nursery brood. But when girls have arrived at their teens. masters coming and going and teachers who give the mhours of careful coaching are not half so good for them as are the contact and the friction of the classroom.
 Whether the school be public or pri- vate. whether on city street or a country road, Is not the all important thing. The essential is that girls shall be thrown into the society of their peers and prepared in the school room for the affairs of the larger world, into which they mus. enter be- fore many years pass.
 
 Of course. in the schoolroom youi are taught how 10 study. how to use your powers. how to appear without confusion and with credit in the com pany of others. and how to bear your self as a unit In the mass composed of units. The power of the personal equation is not undervslued in the schoolroom. Every unit counts one. If one girl is careless. siovenly in her work. tardy. irregular in attendance. and unirustvorthy. she harms not herself only. but brings down the av- craze standing of her class. I hear giris complain os this zs fl It were un- fair. It is 10, unfair. It is really the fairest thing that can happen. and il empaasires the power of the unit What right have yoa to Infringe the sswrssw of rn-rr r1az- .~N fcrsr fss