The Virginia enterprise. [volume] (Virginia, St. Louis County, Minn.) 1893-19??, 1906-05-04
BY MARGARET f. SANGSTER

BY MARGARET E. SANGSTER.
\Copyrlght, ls06. by Joseph B. Bowles.)
nave 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 tRe classroom and meeting the
bright faces of Is girls. each is as diff
1erent 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 a
pod.
Josephine, Katherine, Barbara, Ag-
mes, Mary, Evelyn, run through the
catalogue of beautiful names, and
match them with their sweet possess
sors, and you are impressed with the
variations in type. Let a 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.
and age will be attending school seven
years hence, yet a composite photo
graph taken of them will not be a
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, a new and
charming character attracts you and
you see not single personality, but
the personality of a class.
AS ] sometimes stand on a school
platform, or behind the desk in a
chapel where rows of schoolgirls, o.
college students. make a beautiful pic
ture before my eyes, get the thought
Of a 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-
Gus and self-absorbed She is the only
daughter and her parents and bro
theirs 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 IN gentleness and amia-
bitity, as she needs training in alge-
bra and physics.
Agnes is much too unselfish. She
runs her feet off at home on errands
for everybody. She gives up her own
will SO 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-
ton and gush, but is extremely super
fetal. Each girl has in herself some
quality that is very desirable, but no
girl has all the qualities that go to
make -
The perfect woman, nobly planned,
To warn, to comfort and commando
r. For this reason, if for no other, it
is a misfortune for most, girls to be
taught at home, as is the fashion I'M a
few exclusive families. A governess
in the house is comfort to the moth
er and 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 must enter be-
fore many years pass / T. ..
t* *
OF course, in the sclfoolroom YOU
are taught how to 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 undervalued. in the
schoolroom. Every unit counts one
+ If one girl is careless slovenly in he1
work, tardy, irregular in attendance
and untrustworthy, she harms not
herself only, but brings down the :av.
erage standing of her class II. hear
girls complain of this as If it were un.
fair. 1t is not unfair It Is really ths