College of St Marys of the Springs - Yearbook (Columbus, OH)

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--M ls '4 l1I ' '4 li 'L I1 -'X' '4 li '1 li '4 ls N 4 ls We A kc 4 L . 4 new :ru L. A A A as., 4. A A+asYu-PL. 4+m+m4+1sr.4+k?a4+Q.+m4+.Q-PL But like ourselves, doth own a soul Whose essence light cannot be merged in clay, And so doth wander through the air, And with our souls, doth sweet communion make. 'Tis then we most do feel sweet music's self, Its soft embrace doth lend a sweet enchantment everywhere. Efen now with l-lelen sweet. it doth abide, And she with us her treasure now shall share. S0ltg- LUdlllllQ mrs. Helen llawler Gallen Scent ll The scene doth change, and Anne, who now hath charge. Shall lead us far from childhood's happy hours Into the busy world at large. And she shall tell, how, in the noisy market place. Where men and women buy and sell Their very souls for golden gain, We, too, must take our places and must play our part: In marts of fashion and in haunts of pain: Enjoy the sunshine and endure the rain, Take up the burdens that do come with life, And by o'ercoming, end the strife. .Htl HPOSUOIMC FOI' tht ZOIIDQIII Girl . texpanaed bv requcsti ' mn. Halle oiliaff mCZOfmiCli ffffkiik'-9ffTe ?S T a time when women all over the world are seeking new modes of self-expression, when home-makers are realizing that in order E25 ' to attend to their traditional business of preparing food, pro- viding raiment, protecting children, their interest must extend far beyond the household: there iS growing up a new and wider sense of woman's responsibility to the world. There are some of us who believe that the woman of today needs larger respon- K M , 1 sibility to save her from a dangerous irresponsibility. Time was u -li f when the home drained all her energies, when it was mill and f v X loom, cannery and factory, school and theatre. ln those days she had all the domestic arts and industries in her own hands- and she found them an adequate reason against reaching out for any other activities. lf she stood for those cloistered graces and virtues which we lament today, it was perhaps because She had no time for anything but the seclusion that represented the home idea of yesterday. At present the home is neither secluded nor self-sufficient. New industrial and economic con- 43 W .. is . f fdx T '

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We f 1-We li We lc Wa we :We We lf :Wa We You young girls, with the--Beyond the Alps lies Italy, over the sea is Spain,-lighb of-promise-in-your-dreamy-eyes, are wondering why your beautiful vision is blurred by the appearance of an older one trying to act a gay and giddy part, and she, the mother of sevenl and the oldest a l9l l graduate of her own Alma Mater. But she would have you remember, O Youthful Maiden, that the woman heart is perennially young. But there, we did not come here to preach nor to teach, but dutifully to respond, and our dearest wish is, that your school days at old St. Mary's contain half the happiness that these reminiscences are bringing back to us. ' 1' Here you are, with your eighteen-year later curriculum, your Paris styles, your many pleasures, and splendid opportunities, and I know very well that the first thing you will do will be to make fun of my graduating gown. ll was cream colored and made with a basque! but in one way, it excelled yours-it had a capacious pocket in it. You with your vacation time crowded to the utmost, with motoring parties, house parties, bridge parties and dancing parties, are smiling at our holiday time--jogging down on the Sugar Grove road behind old Dobbin, our picnics, our euchre games and our occasional parlor dance. You may even think our course of study old fogy, but we practiced our music just as unfaithfully, conned our Latin exercise just as faultily, read the great English masterpieces with the same misunderstanding as you yourselves, and as all careless girlhood have done. But the study of Church doctrine, the ethical training which made for Chris- tian, Catholic womanhood-these have remained to be our guide and defense long after the accomplishments have been gone from our minds, busy with the weighty cares which life in its fuller meaning brings to us all. I came here today to do something really splendid. When I received word that I was expected to respond to a toast. all the dormant vanity in my nature was aroused, and I made up my mind that the brilliant, witty, scintillating remarks which were to fall from my lips would be quoted both by word of mouth, and in St. Mary's Year Book for ages to come. But alas, the words, so brilliant, so witty, so scintillating would not come. They seem so easy to say, when one is buoyed up byi vanity. And as if to help out unkind Fate, Mark Twain's words came to my mind: By an error in the planets, things go wrong, end first in the world. Invitations. which a brisk, young fellow should get are delayed. and impeded, and obstructed, until they are fifty years over due when they reach him. When I was a boy in Missouri, he remarks, I was always on the lookout for invitations, but they always miscarried, and went wander- ing through the aisles of time, and now-they are arriving when I am old and rheumatic, and can't travel, and must lose every chance. Young women, I am not fifty: neither am I old nor rheumaticl I remarked previously that I did not come to preach, but this patronage of St. Mary's is so overwhelming, and like Banquo's ghost will not clown, so that when I failed to be witty, I tried to be wise: but failing in both, I am back with you, dear old Convent girls, to join in the march of the hopes, the ambitions, the joyousness, the purity, and the loveliness. timed to the heart beats of glorious eighteen. I Illltfllldt It hath been said for was it but a dream, That Music, that hath power to charm, Is not a common earthly thing. 42

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wud 5 wud stung 1 mug 3 mug 5 :wif 5 :wc 5 :swf mmf ditions have made it simply a dispensary of manufactured commodities. and the modern woman finds that either she must go out into the world to look after her old interests or sink within the home into a state of idleness, frivolity and corrupting discontent. The best use of the released energies of woman has become a very vital problem of contemporary life. In that restless groping and striving known broadly as the Feminist Movement, we have in effect a whole generation of women looking for work-work not for the hands alone, but for the hungry mind and the yearning spirit, insufficiently occupied as the consequence of the industrial invasion of the proverbial woman's sphere. Personally, I believe this search for activity to be a much more wholesome and womanly attitude than that of those quite content to be left without itg and I should like to believe that the agitation for broadening the influence of woman is not left in the hands of leaders who forget the sources and secrets of her power. For though conditions of living change, the substance and end of life remain immutable. The home may have a broader hearthstone today than yesterday, but it must still be warmed with the same fires. Woman is always the custodian of the spiritual, the vestal who keeps burning the sacred flame on the altars of man's aspiration. Whether she is the mistress of the self-contained household of former times or of the socialized home of today, which to rule wisely she must be wisely free, her task remains the same. The world was never so much in need of women with wise heads and wise hearts. It was never so much in need of women trained in schools where the spiritual is not lost sight of in the development of the intellectual. The new times, in a word, demand women of the type of the convent-bred girl: and in addressing the alumnae and pupils of St. lVlary's-nurs- ery of all our best faiths and highest dreams-it may not be out of place to wonder what they are doing in the world to justify the exalted spirit in which they were sent out to meet it. In an age whose profession-more often than its practice-is service, there are so many ways in which they are fitted to serve. From all the open fields which invite their energies-not excluding what the stump speaker designates as as the arena of politics-I wish it might be permitted me to single out one which appeals to me as particularly needy, and almost pre- eminently worthy of cultivation. I believe that convent girlS. HS Part of their spiritual minis- try to the world, ought to feel a special responsibility for the encouragement of good current literature, especially of good Catholic literature. Now it may be objected by those who read much, and especially by those who read little, that current Catholic literature is not equal to the literature that is non-Catholic. While this objection is not so true as it seems--if it is true at all-let us admit for the sake of argu- ment that in the large and popular sense we have not a great contemporary Catholic litera- ture. Who is responsible for that? There can be no question that we had a great Catholic literature in the past. If we have not in the present, the chief reason is because we have not a great Catholic reading public. Until there is a large, a responsive, an intelligent body of Catholic readers, there will never be a representative Catholic literature. Why should any man of talent devote himself to producing something for which there is no demand? So far, all our expression on the subject has been negative. Ws say we don't want wishy-washy Sun- day school talesg we don't want endless volumes of poor sermons: we Cl0n't want flowery little manuals of devotiong we don't want gilded subscription atrocities on the glories of the Catholic Church. Now perhaps we might be much better employed reading poor sermons and subscription books illustrated with clamorously colored lithographs of the Holy Family and the Popes than in absorbing the 'crude appeals to sentiment in secular magazines, and feasting our eyes upon the pictures of actresses and chorus girls. That, of course, is a question 44