, cooking, housekeeping,
wood-carving, nursing, needlework, when they are studied at all, are
studied more professionally and thoroughly and intelligently, and less
in the spirit of the amateur and dabbler. So I would say to you, both
now and when you leave, show that your education in intelligence has
given you wide interests and powers to master all such subjects. Take
them up all the more thoroughly.

Closely akin to this merit of thoroughness is the large spirit of
unselfishness that ought to come, and certainly in many instances does
come, with wider interests, a more intelligent education, and a more
active imagination. Women in our class have more leisure than men; they
can actually do what is impossible by the conditions of life for us men
to do, link class to class by knowledge and sympathy and help and
kindness. They can be of immense service in this way. There is a story
in the life of an American lady, Mrs. Lynam, that occurs to me. There
was much conversation about a certain Mr. Robbins, who had lately died;
he had been such a benefactor, such a good man, and so on. A visitor
asked, "Did Mr. Robbins found a benevolent institution?" "No," was the
reply, "he _was_ a benevolent institution." Women of our class may be,
they ought to be, "benevolent institutions." And such women exist among
us; pity is there are so few of them. They can unobtrusively be centres
of happiness, and knowledge, and generous attitudes of mind. Now there
ought to be more of such women, and I look to our High Schools with
hope. They ought to make girls public-spirited and large-minded.

There is another element in girls' education which is only imperfectly
as yet brought out, and which you yourselves can do something to
develop. I mean the better appreciation of an education which is not in
books, and not in accomplishments, and not in duties, and not in social
intercourse. How shall I describe it? Think of the old Greek education
of men. There was a large element of literature and poetry and natural
religion and imagination in it; and a large element of gymnastic also;
but besides all this it was an education of eye and ear; it was a
training that sprang from reverence for nature, as a whole, for an ideal
of complete life, in body and mind and soul; and not only for complete
individual life, but also for the city, the nation. It was a consummate
perfection of life that was ever leading the Athenian upward, by a
life-long education, to