Trafalgar Castle School - Yearbook (Whitby, Ontario Canada)

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vox COLLEGII 19 The Good Book tells us : The tongue is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison. ' ' But I don ' t suppose that the apostle is referring wholly to woman ' s tongue. In John Knox ' s home in Edinburgh, Scotland, tourists may see hanging on the wall of one of the rooms a steel frame with a tongue attachment that was used in those early days for putting the quiet- us on woman ' s tongue. I have never had to do that yet. The young lady Avho aspires to ideal womanhood cannot neglect to set a watch over the door of her lips. In the Art Gallery in Edinburgh, Scot- land, there is a famous painting by Sir William F. Douglas. In the background is a large old-fashioned fireplace. In front of it is standing a monk who has been doing some figuring on the face of the fireplace. He has been drawing some figures in geometry, indicative of the highest feats of the human intellect. He has gone as far with his problem as he appearently can go, and is represented as standing in the attitude of supplication awaiting the illumination of the Higher Mind. I do n ot know whether you young ladies have gone as far as it is possible for you to go along the highway of ideal womanhood, but believing that your am- bition is along this line I want to go back again to the outline with which I began this address, only I wish to speak first of ' ' the father ' s plan. ' ' We cannot conceive of ideal woman- hood apart from ideal childhood. ' ' Train up a child in the way he should go, is the Divine counsel in which we affirm ab- solute faith. As a straight and perfect tree cannot be gotten from a crooked sprig so an ideal woman cannot be ex- pected from a neglected childhood. Prom the moment the father is per- mitted to look into the face of the new- born child, the Divine ideal for that lit- tle life should begin to take shape, and all through the growing period of that new existence the processes of perfection should be going on. A suggestive cartoon one day appeared in a magazine. It was of a father sit- ting behind a rolltop desk with letter files all along the top and piles of unan- swered correspondence on both sides of him, and while he is buried in his work his little boy of twelve years of age ap- pears in the doorway. Apparently he does not know whether to come in or run away. Underneath the picture are these significant words: A neglected cred- itor. It is, of course, equally possible for a girl in the home to be neglected in like fashion, but if the child can be thought of as coming from God and is eventually to go back to God, then father ' s highest wisdom is to guide those young feet over God ' s pathways. Father never fails to recognize the Di- vine relation between the plant and the flower, between the tree and the fruit, between the grain and the harvest, but how frequently does it come to pass that Father ignores wholly the Divine prin- ciples of life that should find freest play in the life of his loved one. God certainly has an exhalted thought for every daughter, and it should be Father ' s duty, thought, plan, prayer and sacrifice to promote its fullest develop- ment. We have, secondly, to consider the mother ' s ambition. Mother knows the value of the little life far better than the father, because of her sacrifice ne- cessary to this life, and consequently she is prepared to view it differently from others. Her love is ever outstanding. Every daughter owes much to her moth- er ' s love. In it there is counsel, culture, inspiration and heaven ' s sweetness. Her ambition gives love its direction. In the New Testament we have the record of the mother seeking from Christ the chief places in His Kingdom for her two boys. This is but natural, and al- most every mother will seek it as readily for her daughter as for her son. It has been said that sound health, sound sense and sound character are the three essentials to a strong and success- ful manhood. This we believe equally applicable to ideal womanhood, and this the ti ' ue mother should include in her ambitions. But after all, no matter how much

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18 VOX COLLEGII Russia. There are as many different na- tionalities in Canada as in Europe. In every vet;tern city one finds sections where the people are living exactly as they did in the old home lands. If these people are not Canadianized, the situa- tion in our nev. ' land of Canada will be worse than that now existing in old Eur- ope. After the war. there will be a great- er influx of foreignei-s than ever before, and Canada must be ready to cope with the situation, for it will require all her strength. The educated woman, with trained mind, repose, and poise, is one of the greatest forces a nation- has. Are our Canadian women ready for their mighty task ' ? In closing. Mr. Powell .sounded a note of warning. Education is always a mighty force, but it may be a mighty force for good, or a mighty foi ' ce for evil. Germany has educated her people very carefully, but she has educated ithem in the doctrine that might is right, and has entirely omitted from her edu- cational system Jesus Christ and His doctrine of love. In His teaching must our education centre, for only by keep- ing in close contact with Him can we be a force for good. And so ended one of the most success- ful Commencement days in the histoiy of the College. THE IDEAL WOMAN. [Substance of an address given by Rev. A. I. Tei ' iyberry, of Hope Church, Toronto, at the May Day celebration, and which was received too late for the last issue] . Mr. Chairman. — If you and I are to embrace the Ideal Woman this morn- ing, in our thought, we must consider first her desires in the matter, secondly her mother ' s ambitions, and thirdly, her father ' s plans. This is a rough outline of what we now propose to do. Embarrassing? So many ideal women present. Every husband will think we are meaning his wife, and every lady will think we are very personal in our re- marks. A famous author has said : There is no such thing as the ideal woman, yet it may be possible for us to discover such. Maeterlinck in his little book entit- led, Wisdom and Destiny, says, We should live as though we were on the eve of a great revelation, and it will be well to assume this attitude toward our sub- ject this morning. The first time I was ever requested to give consideration to the ideal woman was when as a probationer on my first cir- cuit the Supei ' intendent thereof inform- ed me that according to the discipline of the Methodist Church no young man should take any steps in matrimonial matters without first consulting his older brethren, that they would counsel him concerning the ideal woman for the par- sonage. This is the second time that I have been requested to think of the ideal wo- man — of course it is not the second time only that I have thought of the ideal woman, but just the second time that I have been requested to think along this line. Just why this time I do not know un- less perchance it was that I had found one myself, or secondly, possibly be- cause of the pei ' il of our days. Is it not true that many girls in these abnormal times are forgetting their ideals? or thirdly, I have thought possibly because your ambition as students is ideal wo- manhood. And if this be true then the words of Shakespeare in King Henry Y. may be aptly quoted in our ease : For now sits expectation in the air. When I was a boy at public school some time ago I was unfoi-tunatc enough to have a scrap with one of the girls of the school, and in a moment of forget- fulness was ungentlemanly enough to tell her to hold her tongue. She replied : My tongue is my own, and I ' ll use it, too : and she did. The Russians have a saying: A wo- man ' s hair is long: her tongue is long- er. That was the case with this girl, and evidently this was the case with the girls of Russia, and unfortunately it is the case in other places also.

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20 VOX COLLEGII father and mother, home and college may offer by way of advantage, the all- important thing is thirdly, the young wo- man ' s detennination. She may atrophy all these, or she may greatly profit by them. To-day the young woman must find the objective ideal — not as her mother perchance — tliis is a new day for the world and this is a new day for woman. Many must live singly because this de- vastating war has robbed them of the companionship that they had naturally looked forward to. but after all ideal wo- manhood is witliin the realms of her pos- sibilit ies. The ideal woman is first, a wo- man with great ideals, secondly, a wo- man growing unto perfection. Questioning some scholars of a public school one day I asked them what was the most impoi ' tant thing that could be said about the plant in yonder window. One suggested its height, another its form, another its color another its flow- ers, but at last one little girl answered, Please, sir, the most important thing that can be said about that flower is that it grows. And it is now true that the most important thing that can be said about any life is that it grows, daily pass- ing on toward perfection. The ideal woman is, thirdly, a woman surrendering herself daily to the fash- ioning forces of God. The Avorld swings heavenward on the hinges of holy wo- manhood. The ideal woman, fourthly, is the wo- man who adapts herself to the times and lives her best. Bishop Quayle recently said: The day of God is here. Never since the time of Christ has thei ' e been a period so mo- mentous and articulate as the present. We must be big. ' ' My prayer is that you may all measure up to the demands of your day and to the expectation of your Christ. SENIOR CLASS CONCERT. Take your hats off to our Seniors, girls. They certainly deserve credit for their presentation on Friday evening, April 26th. of An Evening With the Arts. Before the concert, the Juniors were to be initiated for the second time and they awaited in fear and trembliiig outside the concert-hall door. But, as each one marched in, she received the welcome news that there would not be a second initiation as evciyone had gone through the first so well. On Tuesday the Seniors decided to bring before us in life form pictiares, that we have known and loved. They present- ed these in a series of tableaux. How they held their position without moving a muscle was a marvel to us all, and, when The Dancing Girl, Irma Wigle, stepped daintily out of her frame and began to dance one of our graceful old folk- dances, we could have easily believed that some mischievious fairy was playing a trick with our eyesight. The musical part of the program was ably managed by Miss Meath, Miss Geor- gian Smith, Miss Grace Sykes and Miss Helen Millay. The ])rogram was as follows : Senior Song The Senior Class. Liebestraume - - Liizt Staccato Etude - - Friml Miss Meath. The Girl I Left Behind Me Selected Helen Millay. Elaine on the Barge Dorothy Follet and Lucy Robertson. The Vigil - - John Pettie Donalda Vyse. Easter - - Selected Helen Ward. The Doctor - - Luke Fields Ruth Nixon, Lucy Robertson, Clara Underbill, Morden Busby. Madame Le Brun et Sa Fille Madame [Le Brun Muriel Maw, Florence McGillivray. The Rosary - - - Nevin Margaret Maxwell. Hiawatha - - Selected Olive Tucker. Whistler ' s Mother - - Whistler Donalda Vyse. Bubbles - - Sir J. E. Millais Ruth Dixon.