OCR Text |
Show : connciMCcncPT mis . : RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED TO THE YOUNG LADIES OF THE INTERMOUNTAIN IN-TERMOUNTAIN COUNTRY, WHO IN THE NEXT FEW WEEKS WILL RECEIVE RE-CEIVE THEIR DIPLOMAS IN OUR CONVENT SCHOOLS, BY REV. THOMAS II. MALONE. June, that month of "rare days," has come in our time to be a month of weddings wed-dings and "commencements." On every side the ear is greeted with pealing bells and resounding marches and words of cheer and congratulations; and the eye is charmed with passing visions of flowered lovliness and dainty dresses of joyous white and faces fair I and fresh and aglow with happiness and serenity. All nature seems to conspire to surround youth with the bluest skies, and fairest flowers, and the sweetest song that your lives will ever come to know. Truly, the meadows mea-dows of youth are asphodel. And you, looking out upon the expanding plain of life that lies before you, are eager to immerge into that larger and fuller life that invites you your young hearts bouyant with hope, your imaginations filled with the fancies of youth, and your souls intrepid and valiant, albeit ye untried. ' And 3-our teacher and your parents, they too are caught with the infection of your glad, young spirits and share in your joys and your hopes and your aspirations. But their hearts, glad though they be, are chastened and subdued sub-dued by thoughts and recollections in which you can have no part; and a suspicious moisture bedims their eyes, even while their faces are wreathed with smiles of pleasure and pride. The future, so unknown to you, is a-past to them. They know what it has in store; they know the sternness of real -life, its pitfalls and its snares; they know the disenchantments and the heartaches heart-aches and the soul struggles that await you. Their hopes are, mayhap, tinged with fears to which your untried souls are strangers; and their prayers for your future have an awful solemnity about them. about them. And I. too, am impressed im-pressed with a sense of solemnity as I look into that future so soon to become for you a living present, and then a dead, irrivocable past. Into this academic and protected retreat of yours, in which you have been permitted permit-ted to spend the blessed years of your early youth, withdrawn from the soul-stilling soul-stilling atmosphere of a workaday world. I come to bid you welcome not to gardens of ease nor to palaces of pleasure, but into the ranks of that vast army of men and women who, all about you, are bearing the heat and burden of the day, and who, strong in faith, and in hope, and in love are toiling on resisting the allurements of evil, and .struggling with hand and with j brain to bring about the kingdom of God upon earth. The phrase "The Problem of Life," has doubtless a familar sound to you; you have probably been often impressed, impress-ed, vaguely, with a sense of its significance, signi-ficance, you have possibly thought over its meaning and, mayhap, even done an essay or two upon it. You are soon to have its deepest meaning brought home to you, soon to know its length and its breadth and depth: it is to' become to you the awful 'riddle of the j Sphinx which you must solve or meet destnictinn A iA nin e j , icvo jui juu aim aias for me, the problem that in our day confronts us is a more tangled one than ever confronted the race before. Life has become more complex, more serious, more terrible, if I may so say, than it was in earlier days than ours. It has become a' commonplace that we live more rapidly than our ancestors, that "fifty years of Europe" outruns "a cycle of Cathay". But the real char-; char-; acferistic of modern life does not lie j in this. Complexity rather than rapid-j rapid-j ity of movement is the distinctive feature fea-ture of the social mechanism of our day. A century ago life was comparatively compara-tively a simple thing, a simple faith and a pure heart alone sufficed for facing fac-ing it bravely and successfully. Especially Espec-ially was this true of woman. Hers was the home and the fireside. She had her cares and her burdens as she has had sinee the beginning. But. the fierce struggle against the outer world was spared her; the man faced that and j Mueiaea ner. Today this is less true. The home and the fireside have not ceased to be woman's peculiar province, prov-ince, for this must ever remain, unless j the race be condemned to lose its instinct in-stinct for home and family. But today woman has been thrust forth into a busy world, and has to stand shoulder to shoulder with the more rugged man; and at his side, often weak and fainting faint-ing though she be, has to stagger on in a mad, heart-sickening, soul-destroying struggle for daily bread. Whether we like it or not the fact stares us in the face that our day is witnessing a change in the status of women such as the world has hardly seen before. We may mourn over it if we choose, we may deprecate it as an evil for her stnd for the race, and we may sigh and we may pray and we may labor for a return of other davs when it was not so. But our sighs and our prayers and our labors are apt to prove alike in vain: for we cannot bring back those "dear, dead days", so utterly have they passed beyond recall, re-call, nor am I at all certain that we wish aright in this. The study of the history of the growth of our race warrants war-rants the belief that we are entering upon sone new, and we may hope, bet ter phase of our race development; and are now in one of those transition periods pe-riods in which we cannot adjust ourselves our-selves quickly enough to a rapidly changing condition of growth, and in consequence incongruity and absence of harmony so stand out as to make us at first glance imagine that the reign of chaos was about to come ' asrain. But this I prefer to believe is because be-cause we fail to see far enough beneath be-neath the surface. The obtrusive bloomer girl and the "ultra" club woman are not the alpha and omega of the new movement any more than the tailor made dude and the cigarette idiot are the masculine flowers of nineteenth century civilization. They, indeed, have their uses; for without them the cheap wits and the funny men of the press would be put to straits to grind out their daily product; and shallow types of masculine conceit con-ceit would be at a loss to bolster up their claims of masculine superiority; and those philosophers who are wedded to the idols of the past, or who are too oli i or too satisfied, or too lazy to study de l ily the tendencies of the day, would fin the syllogism wanting in a minor premise and their occupation gone. . Let none misunderstand me and conclude con-clude that I sympathize with what, in my judgment, has been justly charac-erized charac-erized as a symptom of the disintegration disinte-gration of Christianity known as "Woman's Rights," whose aim Bishop Spalding asserts is to make woman as strong and intellectual As man, while the result must be to make her profane and vulgar. If she ape the man she will lose the heart of love and yet not gain the commanding mind. I quite agree with the gentle bishop m his opinion that the political women of our day who speak from our public platforms are sharp and unlovely simply because they are displeased with themselves, nor would I venture a dissent from his conviction that to live in the hearts of those who make the laws is more than to have a vote. The emancipation of women, as it has been called, has a deeper significance than to have a vote. It has, it is true, laid heavier burdens upon her; it has driven her from secluded se-cluded .sheltered homes out into the open where storms beat and tempests rage; it threatens to destroy the ideal we have accustomed ourselves to admire ad-mire and love; it has thrust before us types to which we cannot at once reconcile re-concile ourselves and which we cannot find it in our hearts to either admire or love. All this we may grant; and yet one who has confidence in humanity and in that providence that shapes our destiny ought to be permitted to believe be-lieve that these things are not without their compensation. We have had examples ex-amples near home: The amazons, who a generation ago crossed these plains to cast their lot in this then wild and barren region, were not our ideal type of womanly grace and loveliness; physical phy-sical endurance and masculine strength and courage were their characteristics char-acteristics and there were many of them more accomDlished in handling a rifle than in interpreting Shakespeare or rendering Beethoven. But were it not for them the refinements and graces of civilization that today are ours in this western land would be impossible. im-possible. They were of the stuff of which heroines are made; and today in every garden spot in this western empire statues in everlasting bronze should rise to do honor to the woman pioneer. Although her changed status has in many ways made the lot of woman harder, yet, on the other hand, new possibilities and new opportunities have opened up before her, and she is becoming a factor and a power in the world's development such as has not been until now. nl the end she will rise equal to her possibilities trust her for that. , i But whether you agree with me in this optimism or not, the main fact ) which I have adverted remains to confront con-front us. The position of woman has changed and is still changing. You may hail it as progress or you may deplore de-plore it as regression. Be it one or the other, it is at bottom a matter of no consequence for my present purpose. I need only ask you to agree to main contention that so far as woman is concerned "the old order changeth. giving giv-ing place to the new." The needful j thing in either case is that woman be educated to meet the demands of her new position. The new tendencies need to be directed if they are in the main good; to be restrained if they are at bottom bad. And who is to direct or to restrain these tendencies if not woman herself? For surely man has made no such striking success in managing I the world as to justify him in insisting insist-ing upon a retention of his monopoly of the role of philosopher and guide for both halves of the race. In these new tendencies I find consolation because I am confident they contain much of the spirit which actuated women in the ages of faith. The need then of the women of the generation in which you live is education, education in its deepest deep-est and broadest sense. You have here laid the foundation for such an education educa-tion and you have laid it deep and secure. se-cure. You have had unusual and unexcelled un-excelled opportunities under the guidance guid-ance of skillful and learned teachers in this academy. Teachers to whose worth it is an exceeding pleasure to pay compliment on this occasion. You have here cultivated your moral and your spiritual as well as your intellectual intellec-tual natures and you have thereby gained that without which all further attempts at true education must be but as attempts to rear fair and enduring structures upon shifting sands. I would indicate to you today some of the possibilities, pos-sibilities, merely, of your present fit ness. Every high minded girl has the desire to be at some future time a noble, broad-minded, sympathetic woman A noble purpose, the doing, and th edoing with ones whole souj, what that purpose calls you to do will olen make you the woman that all mankind respects and reverences. Glories Glor-ies are the children of hardships and of God's favor. It is not by dreaming great deeds, but by doing them that we obtain the measure of perfection we all long to possess. After the bene-j bene-j ficial effect upon her mental powers, such as years of stimulating and rewarding re-warding occupation as you have pursued pur-sued within these halls it cannot be, nor was it intended that a girl should settle down to a humdrum existence and butterfly way of life as in the or dinary social round. Her training in mental poise was given her for a. higher purpose. Every gifted woman may have an avocation as well as a vocation. What jour avocation is to be is for you to choose. If it be not your lot to seek the higher realms of thought, then it should be your blessed avocation to do your share towards bringing about the kingdom of God upon earth by feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, giving drink to the But after you have drunk deep at this fountain of intellectual life, mayhap may-hap some of you will not stop here? Is there any sound reason why you should not have open to you and should not avail yourselves of the best that university education can offer? I know that this may not be possible for all of you; but that is all the more reason why those to whom it is possible pos-sible should utilize whatever opportunity opportun-ity may offer. For it is only thus that you will have leaders and guides of your own sex, earnest, capable and sympathetic; it is only thus that you will escape the fate of the blind lead- j ! ing the blind. Zeal is no longer a suf-ficent suf-ficent warrant that the zealous one has been called to leadership. Intelligence and training are needed as they never were before. A man may be filled with the milk of human kindness, may be heartstricken at looking upon the physical sufferings of his fellow men, and may be filled with the wildest desire de-sire to banish pain and disease from the face of the earth; but we require more than this of him before we intrust in-trust our disease stricken bodies to his care. We require that he shall have spent years in careful and systematic study of the anatomy and physiology of the human system' . The social organism of which we are a part is as complicated as our own bodies; and like every complicated and highly developed structure is subjected to an ever increasing liability to disorders dis-orders and disease. Shall we intrust its health then to quacks or to those whose sole recommendation is their sympathetic sympa-thetic zeal? Therefore it is that I urge you to seek for yourselves opportunl- j ties for the highest education possible, ! for whatever sphere of life you may choose your guidance and counsel can i be a power for good and for intelligent progress. Formerly a young woman's education was "finished" when she was graduated gradu-ated from her academic course; just as our young men were supposed to have obtained a superb mental equipment when a college had brought them to that stage of intellectual development indicated by a baccalaureate degree. But today universities have grown up on all sides to lead young men and young women further in the pursuit of knowledge. They are a marked feature fea-ture of the age; and if they indicate one thins more than another it is that the stereotyped phrase "The Problem of Life" has put on a new meaning for us of today and demands for its solution a deeper study into the laws of our life and being. The university man and not the college col-lege man has now become the type of intellect and culture. And our young men are found in universities at an age at which they were formerly supposed to be old for mere study and books. The same is fast becoming true of women. wo-men. The legal age of majority remains where it has long been; but by common consent we are slowly, though none the j less surely, raising the age of her in- J tellectual maturity. Time was when a girl should be through her "education" by IS or 19, should then formally enter society and begin forthwith unobstu-sively, unobstu-sively, but earnestly, to angle for a husband. And if she failed to "land the man" by the time she was 25 she ; was regarded with pity and looked . upon as a failure. This in intelligent I circles has ceased to be the case. We j I now expect women to devote more j j years to their education; we have given 1 i the term "youth" greater expansion and even the term "old maid" is falling into disuse and is ceasing to be a word of reproach. And if you are thus expected expect-ed to extend the period of your studies it is because it is plainly recognized that new conditions demand it. r And, after all, will these conditions make women less lovable? less influential, influ-ential, less respected by man? On the contrary, I believe if the new tendencies tenden-cies are properly directed, the good nurtured and the bad eradicated, woman's wo-man's influence will be increased and that she will extend her sway by walking walk-ing in the pathway which has been opened to her by Jesus Christ, whose I Immaculate Mother remains forever the I glory and the ideal of all women. !The ages of faith have furnished us with illustrious examples of glorious ! women who have seized the opportunl- I ties which presented to develop all that is best and noblest and purest in wo-I wo-I man's soul. Maud, wife of King Henry I, made daily pilgrimages to Westminister Abbey during the season of Lent where she would wash and kiss the feet of God's poor and enrich them of her bountiful alms. The same spirit animated the soul of Alice, Duchess of Brittany; of Blanche of Navarre, of the illustrious Mathilda, whom a poetical1 writer says must have been in the mind of Spenser when he penned his "Fairy Queen." "Whose only joy was to relieve the needes Of wretched soules, and helpe the nelpe-lesse nelpe-lesse pore. All nieht she spent in bidding of her bedes. And al! the day in doing good and godly deedes." Lest, perchance, you should think that I have unduly accentuated the need of higher education, I have but to say that the intellc fral splendor of her woman was, during the ages of faith, one of the Church's chiefest glories. glo-ries. Countess Mathilda was the equal of the bishops of the Church; Anna of Brittany took rank among the astronomers astron-omers of her age; Helena Cornora's renown re-nown resounds to this day from the halls of Padua, where as a Doctor of Philosophy she manifested a perfect knowledge of Spanish, French, Latin, Greek, Hebrew and Arabic languages, and who, at the same time, was both poet, theologian and astronomer. To each of these lovely and most intellectual intellec-tual Christian women might be applied . Lear's description of Cordelia: "Her voice was ever soft. Gentle and low; an excellent thing , in women." And then, also, what illustrious examples exam-ples of courage and suffering and endurance en-durance have come down to us from the same ages: Thus speaks the Lady of Branksome to the British lords who come to demand tb'i person of Sir William Wil-liam Deloraine, leading before her eyes her little son their captive: "For the young heir of Branksome's line, God be his aid, and God be mine! Through me no friend shall meet his doom. Here, while I live, no foe finds room." "At the moment when Sobieski mounted his horse to hasten to the re- lief of Vienna, during the memorable seige of 16S3, when the Turks threatened to conquer thir. bulwark of Christendom, Christen-dom, the queen, holding in her arms the youngest of her children, embraced him and wept. "What reason have you to weep, madam?" said the king. "I weep," she replied, "because this child is not in a condition to follow you like the rest." Truly when it was a question of defending the holy state of Christendom, Christen-dom, or in maintaining justice in the absence of law, in the defense of the meek and the oppressed, the high chivalrous chiv-alrous sentiments of nature may have been allowed free scope, and the ideal of Plato's chivalry realized without incurring in-curring the censure of the Calm Eternal Wisdom. Such words as those of Clare to Wilton, Wil-ton, must then have had a noble import: im-port: "Go then to fight! Clare bids thee go! Clare can a warrior's feelings know, And weep a warrior's sigh; Aa'i an Gilbert's spirit feel. ' And belt thee with thy brand of steel. And snd thee forth to die," j And whether it were nursing and tending the poor, or in the realm of science and art or on the field of battle like the Maid of Orleans, nothing was j more in harmony with the spirit of the times than the spotless purity of these women who to lofty fortitude of soul ! j added the "tenderest, sweetest, graces I of Christian character," and who are I j forever the perfect type of a true and noblo woman. It is in order that you might be like j unto these that I entreat you to no longer regard your education as fin-I fin-I ished when you academic diplomas are j obtained can afford. I The demand of the hour is for educa-ed educa-ed women; for women capable of sounding sound-ing and measuring the currents that are bearing us onward today; and who whilst retaining all that was gentle, womanly and lovable in her sister of the past shall add to her accomplishments accomplish-ments a mind well poised and well trained, a judgment evenly balanced, and a profound comprehension of modern mod-ern life and thought. May God guide and bless you, Fair Flowers of the Church, and, as you bid fond farewell to so much that has been pleasant and sweet in your lives, let me bid you onward with hope and courage cour-age to greater endeavors. Ad meliora Farewell. . |