Havergal College - Magazine Yearbook (Winnipeg, Manitoba Canada)

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Havergal College Magazine ease and death for them, and poverty for your own soul. They will teach you how to laugh at small troubles, and to help others in great ones. They will show you the beauty of gentleness, and courtesy and orderliness, and the holiness of self-sacrifice. Ruskin was sitting at their feet when he wrote of women and girls as the guardians of order, health, beauty and love. See how high he puts order, and remember it when you are next tempted to leave clothes on the floor, and books or candy on the bed! Without Thought and her three sisters the seniors will never understand why they must loyally stand for School traditions and discipline as leaders and not unwilling or lazy followe rs. They will certainly never understand why practices of doubtful benefit, such as writing to girls in other boarding schools, writing to boys, reading third-rate novels, bed-room feasting and nibbling between meals, and endless conversation on clothes and entertainments, are discouraged among us. Yet these are things which every girl should reason out for herself. Little foxes again, and dangerous ones, which spoil your taste and habits and refinement. How can seniors lead and shape the younger set if they tacitly or openly condone these things? You must be ahead of others to lead at all. I wish we .ill, young and old, had a dread of being second-rate in mind and thought — at least as great a horror as most of us seem to have of wearing an old-fashioned or dowdy hat ! Yet the brain under the hat is so much more important than what is outside it. You are not educated till you understand that. And why should we toil in the vineyard, when to dream over the wall in the sunshine or to play with the little tame foxes for an hour or two would be so much easier? Well, it is for the Cause. Many years ago, when women were striv- ing to secure for girls as good an education as for boys, the growing daughter of two very gifted parents was constantly stopped when thoughtless and unruly by a cry from her mother Remember the Cause! The Cause was the higher education of girls of which many thought them incapable ; and the cry was to remind a clever, untidy girl that onlookers would judge all girls asking for education by her own behaviour. That Cause was a great one, but yours is even higher. The trained mind and hand and eye which your education is to bring you are to be used for the service of this great new Dominion of which you are so proud. That is what it all leads up to — work for yourself, work for your home, for your class and your School, for your church. All faithful, thoughtful work really helps Canada. What are you willing to give to Canada, present and future? A little thought, a great deal of talk, a verse of O Canada, and later on when you have left school, a little help in the 14

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Havergal College Magazine good style and methods. Slovenly thinking is as bad as slovenly, blotted writing. Try to hold, as well as catch. Only by hold- ing and adding to your store of carefully acquired thoughts will your mind grow strong to develop its own contribution to the general fund of thought. And this we call originality. Then, and then only, will your Literature and History and Scrip- ture notes be something more than repetitions of notes taken in class. This Power of Thought is worth some sacrifice, for it will guide your way through the problems of life as well as through the puzzles of the school-room. But you cannot hurry it, and the price must be paid during months and years of thorough- ness and earnest work. Sit. down and count the cost. It will absolutely bar society engagements on School days, and inter- ruptions, including long telephone chats, on week-day evenings. It will not allow you to crowd unnecessary engagements into a day that is sufficiently full with School work, games or other exercise, and piano practice. It will show you that part of Saturday morning should be spent in preparation or practice, if you are not to be too late at your evening study on other nights of the week. It will convince you that visits to the dentist, oculist and dressmaker can and should be made during the holi- days or on Saturdays, and should never interfere with lessons or preparation. You know that you cannot crowd your lives with so many activities without over-straining mind or body. Take your courage and common-sense in both hands and drive out from this time the little foxes which spoil our Winnipeg vines, and give yourself heart and soul to the work in the vine- yard of your life, otherwise your crop will come far behind in quantity and quality. Examinations are not the final goal in education, and you may pull through these with marks to spare, and yet have a mind only half trained in power to think. The Power of Thought — what will it do in the boarding- school? It will make girls reason that where there is civiliz- ation there must always be law, and that to keep laws makes for one ' s health. This hardly sounds inspiring, but there is much behind that single thought. AVith thinking power come imagin- ation, sympathy and their heavenly sister, insight. These are great artists : make them your friends for life. They can show you how many colours lie behind what you call grey — the grey of everyday life, and they will open your eyes to gold and blue and crimson where you never would have seen them. They scorn the camera, and paint portraits for you of the girls and teachers among whom you live, with their joys and sorrows, their hopes and fears and doubts looking through their eyes, as Rembrandt painted them long ago. And above all, they will not let you think about yourself, for these three fair sisters, Imagination, Sympathy and Insight, know tfral this means dis- 13

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Havergal College Magazine service of others when it does not interfere with your amuse- ments? Surely something more, girls, a very great deal more: not a cheap little offering which costs you nothing, but all the riches you own. The riches of the commonwealth Are free, strong minds, and hearts of health, And more to her than gold or grain The cunning hand and cultured brain. That is why. Do you not think it worth while? Will it not mean something to the West that in each of your homes in days to come there is a girl or woman grown who cares, and cares tremendously, that in nothing Canadians shall come behind the very elect, and for her country covets earnestly the best gifts. Your own gifts to Canada, of self-denial and hard work and devotion, must begin now if you really love her. But giving is hard work, too, and some of us are not very rich — and we must turn to the Giver of every good and perfect gift to help us in this as in all else. Man ' s highest thought, man ' s truest words, man ' s noblest deeds all centre in that Divine and human Life lived in a little, ancient province and now enthroned in highest Heaven. That Life was the greatest of God ' s gifts to the Old World and to the New, and It can be shared by every one of us. Without the Christ-Life our thoughts may end in despair, our words in sound, our deeds in failure. With that Life and in that Strength we may bring to the land of our birth or our adoption the consecrated service that she needs. Your affectionate friend, EVA L. JONES. EDITORIAL NOTES. With this number the Havergal Magazine enters upon the seventh year of its life. During these seven years the School and the friends outside the School who read the Magazine have learned to expect a certain standard of work in its contents. But it is easier to set a high standard than to live steadily up to it ; and it is particularly difficult in this case when, year by year, girls are passing out of the School, and success in games and examinations fluctuates with these changes. Contributions to the Magazine vary, too. This year, the School as a whole is younger, and we have missed the longer contributions that come quite easily from a large and elderly Upper Sixth Form. On the other hand, much promise has been shown in the work that has been sent in, and though but a portion of it has been published, we look forward to some very good results next year, when the contributors will be a whole year older and 15