“There is a past which is gone forever, but there is a future which is still our own.” Never before or after is one likely to have such mingled feelings of regret for the vanished past and eagerness for the approaching future as at the close of the school life. Sometimes it is difficult to decide whether the note of sadness or of joy is the dominant one.

As the school days are seen to be rapidly slipping away, the student recognizes, perhaps for the first time, something of their real worth. They have not been wholly free from troubles and disappointments, though some time, by contrast, it will seem that they have been so. Even now, however, you know them to have been days of happy freedom, of glad fellowship, of joyous achievement. Your chief regret in the future will be that you did not quite understand how perfect they were. Now you begin to see what older people mean when they talk of “halcyon days.” Not that they were the best days your life will know,—let no one persuade you to that,—but they have a quality all their own that can belong to no other period of life. They will loom larger and larger as they recede into the past, for you will realize more and more fully how much was then begun in you which will go on as long as your soul shall endure.

There are few who can approach the end of school or college life without being made a little serious by the thought that they are moving on. “So our lives glide on,” says George Eliot; “the river ends, we don’t know where, the sea begins, and then there is no more jumping ashore.” Perhaps it has come to you with overwhelming suddenness that the days of preparation for life are over and that the life for which you have been preparing is at hand. You seem always to have been in a safe and sheltered harbor. Now you must push out into the great stream of life, must become your own pilot, must henceforth be responsible for the conduct of the voyage. Are you wise enough for such an undertaking? Who is? Yet an all-wise Creator has ordained that this way lies the only possibility of growth. Responsibility is thrust upon us and we grow able to carry responsibility.

The realization of all these sober facts, coming home to the young heart with sudden force, often begets a mood of seriousness and of peculiar responsiveness. It may be that one has not always listened very attentively even to words spoken in deepest earnestness. Life is so full of absorbing interests that it is easy to hear yet hear not. We sometimes forget what an enormous amount of good advice is given to young people and how difficult it would be to follow all of it. Yet I have seldom known a student in whom the combined circumstances of graduation—those to which I have referred and many more—did not produce an earnest and responsive mood, a mood which welcomed sincere and kindly advice. At such a time words of counsel are likely to sink into the heart as seeds into the upturned earth after a rain. Is it for this reason that we call in the wisest and most inspiring speaker we can find to say the very last words to those whom we send forth, conscious, as we always must be, how far short our best efforts have fallen of our high intentions?

There is in the heart of every young person who has any serious thoughts a desire that life may be lived worthily. Who can look forward with any satisfaction to being a drone in the world’s busy hive? Who can be content to count only as a cipher? “Each of us,” says one of our ex-Presidents, “unless he is contented to be a slumberer on the earth’s surface, must do his life-work with his whole heart.” Does not this strike a responsive chord in each one of us?

There is a phrase current in these days which began as slang, but which found so useful a place it is not likely to disappear. It is the phrase, “make good.” It is oftenest heard in connection with young people after they have left school or college for active life. Their anxious friends inquire, “Will he make good?” “Is she making good?” Unless I am mistaken there is more or less turmoil and anxiety in the minds of most young people—an anxiety seldom admitted to others and not always to themselves, lest they may not “make good.” The greater one’s longing to be of use, the greater, perhaps, the fear of inability to live up to one’s high obligations. How can one be sure of finding the opportunity to render the service one is eager to render? All departments of service seem already crowded; can it be that the world needs more workers? One must be peculiarly endowed with self-confidence who feels no misgivings on this score. Yet timidity never accomplished anything, and belief that we shall succeed is the first essential of success. Though the world presents an apparently solid front to the would-be worker, it is astonishing how quickly it makes a place for one who shows the qualities of perseverance and pluck. There is work for every one who is earnest and willing. Put out of your mind, then, every thought of failure, have faith in yourself and your own powers, and believe that your part in life will be a worthy one.

We must remember, in the first place, that what we are at any given time is only the beginning of our real selves, that is, of our realized selves. The self you seem to be is not you any more than yourself of five years ago was really you. We are constantly changing, never completed. Little do you know the power that may develop within you. To begin somewhere, somehow, doing what your hand or your brain finds to do and doing it enthusiastically and well, is a sure guaranty of that growth which begets larger opportunity.

To discover that opportunity, however, that vantage-point which determines future growth, is, in the case of many young women, not so easy as it seems. Few who are not brought close to the problems of large numbers of young women realize how much more difficult it is for them than it is for their brothers to find, immediately after graduation, conditions which are conducive to earnest, purposeful, and growing lives. Contrast a graduating class of young women with a similar class of young men. Look forward into the next few years and note the differences that are likely to exist in the conditions and circumstances of their lives. In the majority of cases the young man has already chosen his life-work and he hastens eagerly to it. Every stimulus to endeavor is furnished him. The world expects him to give up all else, if necessary, for that chosen work, and it is demanded of him that he succeed. He knows the rich rewards which come to the man who reaches the top of his profession or business. He may go to any part of the earth that will best suit his own purpose. Though he be an only son, or even an only child, he goes, and the world does not disapprove. To give up a promising career that loved ones might not be left lonely would seem, to say the least, quixotic. Has not the young man his own destiny to carve out?

All this is probably right. I am not finding fault with the world’s attitude toward its young men. I am not intimating that there is no difference between men and women, or that it is right or desirable that the average young woman should aspire to a “career.” I should like, however, to point out some of the obstacles that often lie in the way of her growth. How frequent are the comments upon the apparently aimless and purposeless life of some young woman who once was eager for growth and useful activity! I want to inquire what the world has done to make her life purposeful. Indeed, the probability is that if she has desired to engage in some definite work that she loved and believed worth while, a chorus of voices has gone up in protest.

Not all girls meet the same problems after graduation. In this respect there are to my mind three distinct classes. First, there is the girl who is well satisfied to settle down at home and to whom after a brief period there comes an early and a happy marriage. So far as we are concerned here, her problems are settled, and settled in an eminently satisfactory way. To such a girl one only wants to give the warning that to ensconce one’s self snugly in a happy home with one’s loved ones and forget the rest of the world is ignoble. There are too many bad homes in the world that need your touch, there are too many homeless people who need your hospitality. While the first and best service you can render is to create an ideal home, yet that home should be shared. One thing which all of us, from the greatest to the least, can do is to work for the betterment of the community in which we live. So long as there are bad laws or unenforced good laws, harmful sanitary conditions, wrong social influences, we should prove our good citizenship by making sacrifices for the public welfare. The woman without a business or profession is in a peculiarly advantageous position for giving the service those with less time at their disposal cannot render.

The second class of girls I have in mind consists of those who do not wish or need to settle down at home with little or nothing to do, but who crave a larger activity. I am not speaking of those who are genuinely needed at home. No girl with right instincts can be so cowardly as to desert in their need—and for her own happiness or supposed welfare—those to whom she owes most. Yet the need for her often seems to exist when it really does not. There is no family that would not be the happier for the presence of an affectionate and helpful daughter in the home. Increase in the family happiness alone, however, is not a sufficient excuse for stifling the desires of an eager and aspiring daughter. The family should make sure that her highest welfare, as well as their own, is being guarded. When the parents decided to give that daughter an education, they took an irrevocable step. Is it strange that now, with all her mental faculties developed and her heart awakened to the needs of humanity, those things which once filled her life can do so no longer? Parents who do not want to see in their daughter the development of new interests and new longings should not educate her.

How often have I heard the plea that the daughter was needed in the home when to the outward observer this need was much less than the daughter’s need of opportunity! Those who take it upon themselves to deprive a young woman of that form of growth, or of service which she most desires, should not be forgetful of her future. How many women have I seen who had given up exclusively to their parents the best years of their youth, letting the time slip by when they might have acquired proficiency in some special and satisfying work! Death finally stepped in and removed the objects of their love and the center of their life-interest, leaving them alone, with empty hearts and lives. Look about you and see how many women you can count up who belong to this class. I have often asked myself in such a case what it was the family received from this woman to justify the enormous sacrifice. I sometimes wonder how parents ever dare to run the risk of such a fate for a beloved daughter. The woman who does not marry should have some definite occupation as a permanent source of happiness and growth.

Let us assume, for a moment, that you are one of the many young women who long for some form of service that will exercise all your higher powers and faculties. Let us suppose, further, that you are free from those family responsibilities which would debar you from gratifying that longing. The craving for useful activity is not something to be stifled. It is the result of one of the greatest spiritual laws of life—the law that action, progress, achievement are the essentials of a happy and contented life. The soul wearies of the most beautiful surroundings when deprived of happy activity. One of the supreme joys of life is the joy of doing. To feel all one’s powers stretched to the utmost, and to realize that through the exercise of those powers one is making a real contribution to the world’s welfare, is the source of the deepest satisfaction the human heart can know. Teas and balls and all the pleasures of social intercourse have their place, but you cannot live on them. They cannot feed the sources of the soul’s power.

“Do something worth living for, worth dying for. Do something to show that you have a heart and a mind and a soul within you,” were some of the ringing words of Dean Stanley. Half a century ago the world’s emphatic disapproval of the woman who engaged in any activity outside of the home was enough to clip the wings of all but the most daring. How difficult it is for us to realize now the scorn and contumely which were heaped upon noble Florence Nightingale, when she announced that she intended to become a nurse and to establish training-schools where other young women might study that self-sacrificing profession! It was called unwomanly, degrading.

The modern Florence Nightingale finds a world eager to welcome her services, ready to recompense her for them, and glad to honor her. The young woman of to-day finds little in the world’s attitude to debar her from entering upon any form of service which attracts her. Thus have our ideas regarding women and their rights and privileges progressed in the last fifty or sixty years. We recognize that in some respects men and women are not as different as we once thought. The craving for self-realization and the joy of achievement are neither distinctly masculine nor distinctly feminine. They are simply human.

Find, then, an opening somewhere. If you cannot secure the precise thing you want to do, take what you can secure and make a success of it. Learn to do something well, and if possible let it be something for which the world is glad to compensate you. Mrs. Palmer believed that every girl, rich or poor, should acquire the ability to earn a living for herself and others in case of need. She insisted upon “the importance of giving every girl, no matter what her present circumstances, a special training in some one thing by which she can render society service, not amateur, but of an expert sort, and service, too, for which it will be willing to pay a price.”

The third girl whom I have in mind is the one whose presence in the home is indispensable, who must put out of mind all forms of remunerative labor, and, therefore, must find her chief success and happiness in ministering to the needs of loved ones. It may be that the mother upon whom you once leaned so heavily must now lean on you. Or perhaps the mother is no longer in the home and you have the high privilege of taking her place. What better opportunity for growth than this could any girl ask? We cannot choose our duties. Life makes them for us, and if we shirk them, there is no happiness and no success for us. If you make it the rule of your life to escape from what is burdensome and to choose the path of pleasure, happiness will not come anyway and you will lack the satisfaction of knowing that you have done right.

Yet even the girl who remains in her own home can usually spare time and strength for some other service, and it is best that she should. Her horizon is thereby widened, new friends that are worth while are made, and she is given an opportunity for growth in a different direction from that supplied by home duties. I have known many girls who have been remarkably successful in combining the two—work inside and work outside of the home. Living in your own home and helping to make it a center of attraction, hospitality, and fine influence, you are in a peculiarly fortunate position for rendering a form of service which is needed in every city and every village throughout the country. Many young women so situated have done efficient work in connection with the Young Women’s Christian Association or with girls’ clubs. Church work is a field that is open to all. In women’s clubs, literary clubs, and organizations for civic betterment many find avenues for useful activity, while others find satisfaction in charity work, hospital work, or other forms of benevolent service.

The young woman who seeks to give her service is often surprised at her inability to find just what she likes or to perform it well when found. This is because the untrained worker is always at a disadvantage. It is far easier to fill a humble position on a small salary, where the duties are definite and must be performed whether one will or no. In such a position, if one is earnest and industrious, one must necessarily grow. With all forms of unpaid labor, the danger is lest one may not take one’s work seriously enough, and may not hold one’s self closely to responsibility. Any trained worker who depends upon volunteer assistants, as is often the case in girls’ clubs and the Young Women’s Christian Association, can tell you how rarely she finds an unpaid helper upon whom she can depend. If you select some such work, even though you can give it but a few hours a week, and if you see fit to throw yourself as enthusiastically and earnestly into it as if you were taking a position as teacher or librarian or stenographer, there can be no doubt that you will find in it happiness and success.

When you think of the thousands of homeless women wage-earners, you can realize how thankful every girl should be who has a good home. Surely there is, for most girls, some midway ground between starting out as independently as their brothers do, to carve out their own career, and stagnating at home. One of the chief results of the higher education of women should be that they do much uncompensated labor which is now done badly or not at all. There is a rich field for women of the well-to-do classes who do not need to earn their living, and this field is growing larger every year. There is little excuse for idle hands or empty hearts or purposeless lives. Some have eyes to see, yet they see not. If you belong to the class of girls to which I have referred, ask yourself what some more eager and purposeful person in your place would find to do.

It is a splendid thing to live in the twentieth century. The young people who enter life these days are going out into the busiest world there has ever been. Never has the need of strong, capable, intelligent women been so great. The bond of fellowship which unites each one of us to the whole human race is to be recognized in the future as never before. Women of the future are to demand of themselves almost all that was demanded of the women of the past and much more, and they will be equal to the demands because of more highly trained intelligence.

The greatest temptation of the average young woman to-day in our better classes of society is to listen too willingly to the winsome voice of pleasure. I do not mean wrong kinds of pleasure; I mean those that are in themselves harmless. Nor do I mean that it is desirable that youth should lose any of its natural joy and gladness. The world can ill spare any of that. But the continual giving-up of ourselves to things that leave no lasting impress for good, and that do not lift us above ourselves, robs us of time and strength that should be given to the main business of life.

“The great wrong in modern life,” says Professor James, “is a desperate struggle for a four-cornered contentment. Teach those who come your way that it is not a formal peace which is worth having in life; it is the deep consciousness of power to create and progress, to create new in life, and to live for wide, free, unsullied things, which never fail and never can decay.”