Eastern Michigan University - Aurora Yearbook (Ypsilanti, MI)

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Graff iliuller, Evan nf mantra XYAS asked by the nianagenient of The Aurora to attempt to account for Miss Fuller, our genial Dean of XYomen whose face looks upon us so pleasantly from the opposite page, and in so doing to account also for her unusual acceptableness and usefulness in this institution. Hegel says,-and I am sure that in attempting to account for anything or anybody one cannot niake a better beginning than this,-Hegel says that life means experienceg that more life means more experienceg and that there is no way of getting more life but by getting more experience. l am sure that this View must appeal to us all. Certainly. We are built up to no sinall degree out of our experiences. And this helps us to account for the fact that the ambient space which is successively filled with Miss Fulleifs genial presence as she goes about in the world is so charged with vitality. ln school and out of school: in rural and in urban lifeg among the high and lowg east, westg abroad and in our landg in society and in business her experience has been large andvaried so that she has taken toll to an unusual degree of the full range ot our modern' life. But I hardly think that Hegel could have meant to teach that life is all experience. Surely there must be some selective and organizing center about which these experiences gather, and it would not be surprising if a completer analysis should show that this organizing center is usually the main thing in the case. lt is the reaction upon experience 8

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that gives it form. power and individuality. One might have lived alongside Miss Fuller all her life and yet have failed to become her unique and admirable self. All people who are of much account in the world arealiiictecl with a certain divine madness to be useful to others in some way of choice or inheritance. Distinguished activity in the great historic trades or occupations is the most common and useful form of such possession. It is not given to many people to be as useful outside their ordinary occu- pation as they easily may be in its faithful exercise. The great King and Master of us all was for thirty years a car- penter and only for three years a teacher and healer of men. For most of us at least efficiency in a chosen trade or occupation is the supreme test of a useful life. And so we find everything to praise in Miss Fullers great devotion to her chosen Work,-the economics of the home, with especial reference to the great problem of human foods. But it is as the wise and efficient Dean of Women that she is best known among us. In this capacity her home has come to be a social center of great attraction for the girls of the school, who find in her a faithful friend and judicious adviser, and, through her influence, an introduction to a Wider circle of interests than they could otherwise have known. And so I feel grateful for this -opportunity of expressing to her the high appreciation and warm regard of both the town and the school-faculty and students,-and the hope that she may continue to find as now great happiness and usefulness in her work. -l2flWlTl .-X. Strong. 9