AIMLESS REVERIE VERSUS A RESOLUTE AIM-THE NEW PROFES

SION..

CHAPTER IV.

THE NEW IDEAL OF WOMANHOOD....

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*** By permission of Rev. Dr. Theodore L. Flood, several chapters
originally written for The Chautauquan are included in this book.

HOW TO WIN:

A BOOK FOR GIRLS.

CHAPTER I.

WHY I WROTE OF WINNING.

LONG ago, and long ago it was, in the days when I used proudly to write "School Teacher" after my name, I bought a certain book for the express purpose of reading it to the girls I've left behind me. The book is one beloved by train boys, of which they and other venders have sold so many that the latest dodgers read, "Twentieth thousand now in press. It is sensible in matter, attractive in style, and goes by the enticing name of "Getting on in the World." Naturally enough it was written in Chicago, and like most "Garden City" notions, is a success. But the trouble with this volume was that it didn't fill the bill. I wanted to read it to "my girls," to stir up their pure minds by way of remembrance that "life is real, life is earnest," and the rest of it. But as I scanned its bright and pleasant pages I found out-what do you think I found? Why, that with the light of a new dispensation blazing in upon him, and the soprano voices of several million "superfluous women" crying, "Have you no work for me to do?" this

honored author had written never a word about creation's gentler half! His book contained three hundred and sixtyfive pages, but if you had read a page each day, all the year round, you wouldn't have found out at last that such a being as a woman was trying to "to get on" in this or any other world. Not a bread-winning weapon had he put into the hand of the neediest among us, nor had he, even in a stray chapter or "appendix," taken us off by ourselves and drawn us a diagram of our "sphere."

I was so pained by this that I wrote Professor M (the gifted author, and my personal friend), asking him why he had thus counted out the women folks in his book upon success in life. I even ventured to hypothecate his reason, saying to him:

"DEAR SIR: I do not think you did this with malice aforethought, or from lack of interest in our fate, but simply and only because, like so many of our excellent brethren, you done forgot all about us,' as Topsy would say."

Whereupon came a prompt and gracious reply, with the frank admission :

"You guessed aright; I simply forgot to speak of

Now, you perceive, it set me thinking-this obliquity of mental vision, which had led a writer so talented and wise to squint thus at the human race, seeing but half of it. I recalled the fact that, into most families, are born girls as well as boys; nay, that, as many an overburdened pater familias can testify, girls come not unfrequently in largely

superior, if not exclusive numbers. Having, also, at a remote period of my history, belonged to their helpless fraternity, I was haunted by the wish that I might write a sequel to the professor's excellent book, talking therein to girls and women about success in life. Perhaps my time has come perhaps I have now the largest audience that has yet consented to listen to my "views." Anyhow, I mean, in these off-hand pages, to talk to girls of "How to Win" in something besides the sense treated of in books of etiquette and fashion magazines, or systematically taught in dancing-schools.

And now, my dears, if you are patient and my small assistant keeps me in lead-pencils, I shall try to show that if every young woman held in her firm little hand her own best gift, duly cultivated and made effective, society would not explode, the moon would not be darkened, the sun would still shed light. As things are now, when I see an audience of young men, they remind me of a platoon of soldiers, marching with fixed bayonet to the capture of their destiny, while an assembly of young women, on the other hand, recalls a flock of lambs upon a pleasant hillside, that frisk about and nibble at the herbage and lie down in the sun. Above them soars the devouring eagle of their destiny, sweeping in concentric rings through the blue air, and ready to pounce down upon them, while the meek little innocents turn their white faces skyward and mildly wonder what that graceful creature is up yonder?" Girls remind me, too, of the reply given by a bright young friend of mine to the solemn exhortation that she should "make the most of life.”

"Humph!" she exclaimed, with a rueful grimace,