The daily Gate City. [volume] (Keokuk, Iowa) 1855-1916, 1910-02-20
Mrs. Reeves, Talk.

I wi o. nOOSVS
/ Below is given, in full, the interest
| ing talk of Mrs Reeves to her audi
ence of young ladies on Friday after
noon:
In the years that are gone l taught
| High school for six years. Ny closest
and best friends were High school
girls. For that reason there is no 9TH
er age which appeals to me so strong
lily as yours, and because of the mem
DRY of those six happy years | am par
/ ticularly pleased to meet you today.
We are told that one responding to
a toast has the privilege of talking on
and on and on and never by any acct
dent hitting his subject, but SO inter
esting do / find the thought We are
to speak of today that l feel inclined
to stick to the text Some one has
! very cleverly said that Environment
counts for nothing unless you help
to make it." This is but half truth.
4 for the environment Of the school and
the associates do have great effect
upon the character of the girl. /
sometimes think they have more effect
Il than the lessons she learns. Certainly
memory sticks much more tenaciously
to the friends and the environment
than it does to the binonlial theorum
or the cate of the fall of Rome.
None of you, am sure.
are old enough to remember
with any appreciation the edi-
torials which Keokuk used to en-
4 jog in the days of the late Sam NJ.
Clark, that wonderful man with the
gifted pen Apropos of the thought
that you remember your associates
longer than the lessons learned he
once wrote: "Of my first school |
don't remember one thing that the
teachers tried SO hard and so drearily
to teach me. remember how we
used to scrape up the clean sand with
which the school house floor was Gov
cred, and make sand pies | can tell
you just how you ought to place your
foot on the sand heap to make a nice
sand pie And can remember a fight
between the teacher and one of the
big boys. And l can remember feeling
! was lost one day when our big sister
left me to my own resources at the
noon hour and went off SKY larking
with the other big girls. can re
member carrying Sissy Russell's din
S ner basket and thinking in an ecstacy
of conviction that there never was
girl with such curls as Sissy's, and
SO on and on in a half centurys retro
!. spect of school life. | remember the
e thrilling incidents and never a WORD
: of the lessons"
! And so you win find in
< the years OF your maturity that
your associates are most indelIibly
S written in your memory OF necessity
: the atmosphere and the association i,
0 high school or college or univers
d ity is different from that found any
d place else in life. You form a little
: colony; your work and your socia
relations are largely there. How de
{ lightful and how necessary the socia
i life is. There is opportunity there fol
you to exercise the same social graces
which belongs to your mother and hei
friends in their wider and more varied
social life. There is abundant oppor
tunity for the exercise of that very
fine quality-courtesy And do yoi
know that this is quality which al
ways makes the great man, the grea
woman Your petty man is the on,
who is abrupt, who fidgets in his chat
while he talks to you. 1t is the same
with the women who fret over thei
domestic affairs, who fume with thei
busting and bed making and dressing
and let their small worries creep il
between them and the people the,
meet. Wrath is not always weakness
but discourtesy always is. The chill
who is rude is but the forerunner o
the boarish man, the discourteous VIC
man. 1t is in the small affairs of lif'
that courtesy finds its perfect growth
Any of us can be servilly deferentia
to the rich, the powerful, whose ali
We seek, whose fayors we solicit
whose smiles we hang upon. Blu
she is a clod who has a courtesy TO