University of Wisconsin Superior - Gitche Gumee Yearbook (Superior, WI)

Page 20 text:

GITCHE GUMEE abiding cause of contentment. Work that gives pleasure is play, but play that is devoid of happiness is drudgery. Those who must seek happiness through the different forms of play so as to have peace and contentment, seldom find it. for true joy lies not in anti-socialistic conditions, and no play is for the amusement of the selfish individual. Seek happiness for yourself and she will flee from you, but seek it for another, and you get the most of it, because your heart is opened by a generous impulse to the reception of gratitude from the happy one. It is this reciprocal movement that increases the sum total of enjoyment; for action stimulates reaction, which in turn stirs your ability to serve another. The smile gets a return smile, and this impels you to give another; but you have passed on. and your second reaches another, who gives back to you. You live in a world of happiness, but the conditions arc of your own unconscious making. 'Phis alternating of agent and object of beneficial service, whether it be for the physical, the mental, the moral, or the spiritual, is the foundation of the truest type of joy that the world can know. The physician who does his work primarily for the love of it receives from his patient the gratitude that makes him the more efficient in his treatment of his next, and so on, with a never ending accumulation of happiness and an ever increasing ability to enjoy it. It is so with the clergyman, with the teacher, the author, the groceryman, the butcher and the baker. There is no service anywhere that ministers to human interests that is so low as to be incapable of giving joy to the one who loves to do it from the motive to help some one to move towards a better enjoyment of giving, that others may return the service. The street cleaner and the garbage collector may be included here with the same propriety as the trimmer of hats and the writer of poems. I love my work because it helps the human family to better things, and because I can do it, is the sole condition of being happy on earth. If you can say that, you are a happy person, no matter whether you are a scrubwoman or a drainman. If you cannot say that, you are not, even though you be prince or king, a minister of the church, or an editor of a great paper. Thus it is that happiness is inseparably combined with daily occupations. If you cannot find it here, it will be of no use to conduct an independent search for it divorced from service. Hut says some one, “I am compelled to earn a living.” To that one there seems no other way than to view labor as a curse and to accept it as a portion for sinful man. He hates his job and dislikes his employer. He connives to shorten the hours of labor and to give as little as possible from hour to hour. The man who hires him pays him in distrust and as little coin as possible. Neither gives joy to the other. Both go to bed at night weary and rise on the morn unrested, only to repeat the dismal failure. The worker goes to poverty and death, the other endows colleges, gives to charity to make amends for the mistakes in simply living. Both are wrong. If the work gives not life, it can at the best give but a poor living to him who employs, as well as to him who is employed. Here arc two gardeners, one who works because he gets life and love out of his work, the other because he gets enough to buy meat and clothing for his family. The first gets five dollars a day, while the other gets one; and the first is by far the cheapest to his employer. He by his work gets life and a living, but the dollar man gets nothing but his dollar. From the first the employer gets service that gives him life and comfort, but from the second nothing but the digging in the dirt. Both workmen quit at six o’clock, but from widely different motives—the one because joy in gardening ought to give % PAGE EIGHTEEN

Page 19 text:

of woodwork, blacksniithing, and mechanical and architectural drawing. This work is still further amplified by our trades departments. Wc teach cabinet and carpenter work, shoe making, and printing. 'ITic periodicals which accompany this letter arc both printed at this school, and the work is done by the pupils. In the shoemaking department our boys learn all forms of shoe repairing and also how to make new shoes. In the cabinet department they arc taught to make various pieces of furniture, so that at the present time a large part of the furniture about the school has been made by our own boys. For the girls we have a complete domestic science course which includes sewing, including dress-making, and cooking. Some of our girls also become expert typesetters. Each girl takes a course in millinery. Of the nine girls who graduated last June, each one designed, cut, and made her own graduating gown and also her graduation hat. They were all entirely creditable, and 1 was a proud man as I took them to the gallery to be photographed. At the present time wc have in this school two young women and two boys who are both deaf and blind. All of them arc perfectly deaf. Some of them sec well enough to make their way around reasonably well, but not well enough to read; hence they must be taught by methods used for the blind. What these students can accomplish, although lacking in the two principal senses that convey impressions to the mind, is truly remarkable. In the way of better facilities for instruction and care for the deaf children, wc have just completed a large industrial building, well equipped for its purpose, and shall have completed and ready for occupancy next September a large building for our girls. This building includes commodious sleeping rooms, study rooms, play rooms, tub, shower, and pool baths, and a gymnasium 100 feet by 52 feet. I have often said and really believe that wc have here the two hundred happiest children in the state of Wisconsin. I thank you for the opportunity your invitation gives me to greet my former friends in the Superior Normal School, to all of whom, as well as to the many new members within the student body and faculty, I extend a hearty wish for the highest success and greatest happiness. May I close with a little sentiment which I penned as a Christmas greeting to the teachers and other employes here? It is one of the blessed provisions of God that joy and gladness and peace neither from ease nor station nor wealth arise. In all walks of life arc found the buoyant mind and the gladsome heart. They arc born of a conscience that says ever “I)o right. a heart that ever feels for others and a mind and a body that go to their work with that clastic energy that promises success in all undertakings. April 8. IQUQ. 13 f3 13 From Mr. G. L. Bowman To have a vocation that gives you a living because it is necessary to human interests, that gives you pleasure because you like to follow it, that gives you a stimulation to do it better from day to day because you can sec that you do it a little better than most people, is to have a permanent source of happiness and an GI TCI IE GUM EE PACE SEVENTEEN

Page 21 text:

place to joy in some other line of service, while the other because the labor union says so. or because the pound of flesh has been duly cut from next the heart of labor. Because of this condition of things there is a cry of misery ever going up from the ranks of the world’s workers. Men arc longing for life and brotherhood, mothers' hearts arc being eaten out because children are crying for bread, employers are stockading their plants lest they he attacked by those who need them to get a living with, supreme courts and boards of arbitration arc busy making adjustments that scarcely last until the ink that prints them is dry, those who believe in God arc nightly praying for the dawn of a new day, the literary folk arc turning out tons of books to show that laboring men arc wrong or that capital is not doing right, the politician is suggesting many remedies, but seemingly to little purpose. It may work out all right some day and in some way. I wish 1 knew just how it is to come about. But I cannot avoid the belief that if each seeks happiness in daily occupation because he gives joy to others and because he can do this particular piece of work well: that if the employers of labor offer life through work to the employee; and if both joy in the bettered condition of the other, there will, through the universal brotherhood of man, come that peace and contentment which all the miserable arc seeking for so vainly. Place yourself in fitting harmony with some fruitful line of labor, and one step is taken in the right direction. GIT CHE GUM EE JS fB 15 From Mr. A. D. Whcaldon I wish to thank you very much indeed for your offered opportunity of greeting the readers of the Gitcmh with a few things concerning our year here in Europe. So far the year has been an admirable mixture of pleasure and profit. Berlin is one of the most beautiful cities of all Europe, and its opportunities along lines of art, music, theaters, and museums are unsurpassed; so there is never a want of an avenue for pleasant, profitable recreation and amusement. The university has been equal to the highest expectations, and consequently I have found there an abundance of that more serious form of amusement commonly called “school work.” Fortunately we have not had to spend all our time here in Berlin. Our first week on the Continent was spent in Holland, that beautiful lawn-like home of the Dutch, the land that gave us the founders of New York and the ancestors of Prof. Hcmbdt. Our Christmas vacation we spent in Dresden, and during the Faster, or intersemester, vacation, which lasts six weeks, wc made our most extensive trip. It included South Germany, Switzerland, and Italy. Wc went as far south as Naples and as high up as the top of Vesuvius. Going, we crossed the Alps by the Brenner Pass in Tyrol, and returning, by the St. Gotrhard. The scenery along both routes is wonderfully beautiful, but for marvelous feats of engineering the St. Gotthard is far in the lead. Italy is long on old ruins, old churches, paintings, statues, wine, donkeys, smells, and fleas, and short on good eating and the English language. It is needless to say that this inequality of supply and demand was the subject of much comment, and at times was the cause of physical suffering and the loss of valuable sleep. Wc visited Verona, Padua, Venice, Florence. Rome, Naples. Pisa. Genoa, and Milan. We rode in PAGE NINETEEN