her take care to reach out for a
bigger and fuller life than she is leading. And there is, too, the
selfish student whose "class-spirit" is self-spirit; and the girl who is
not selfish but who uses herself up in too many interests, dramatic,
athletic, society, philanthropic and in a dozen others. She is probably
over-conscientious, a good girl in every way, but in doing too much she
loses sight of the real aim of her school life. To these must be added
another student,--the freshman who skims the surface, and is, when she
gets out, where she was when she entered--no, not quite so far along,
for she has slipped back. She is selfish, relying upon the patience and
burden-bearing capacity of her father and mother, as well as the school.

No doubt every girl would meet her obligations squarely if she realized
what was the underlying significance of the freshman year; the school
life would surely be approached with a conscientious purpose. What a
girl gets in school will much depend upon what she has to give. No girl
is there simply to have a good time or merely to learn things out of
books. Nor is she there to fill in the interim between childhood and
young womanhood, when one will go into society, another marry, and a
third take up some wage-earning career. No, she is there to carry life
forward in the deepest, truest sense; and the longer she can have to get
an education and to make the best of the opportunities of school and
college life, the richer and fuller her after-years will be. Both middle
life and old age will be deeper and stronger. Let us think about these
girls, let us think about what it means to be a freshman, and so lessen
our difficulties and increase our pleasures; let us have a big
conception,--a large ideal always at heart--of what the _first year_
should be, and beginning well we shall be the more likely to end well.

II

THE GIRL AND THE SCHOOL

Inside school or college the girl is in several ways responsible for the
atmosphere. Merely in her conversation she can be of service or
dis-service. It may be simply a good joke which she is telling, but if
the joke misrepresents the school she will, perhaps, do lasting harm. If
she is hypercritical--and there is nothing so contagious as
criticism--she influences people in the direction of her thought; she
sets a current of criticism in motion. A student frequently gives vent
to an opinion that is only half-baked--it is well, by the way, to make
z