COMMENCEMENT EXERCISES. 455 



very generally recognized; it has become rather a question of what it is 

 that, in the solving of her own life problems, she can best give to her 

 age. "What is to be her own peculiar, individual work? 



We know that women have been one of the greatest regenerating 

 forces in our civilization, and that through the ennobling of their posi- 

 tion in society has come the ennobling of the race, but we do not 

 know, as yet, just what man's jjart and woman's is in the ideal state of 

 today. A\'e are living too near our own times to say. But in the com- 

 plex ordering and the many-sided issues of our modern life, the neces- 

 sity of building well-rounded, comi^leted men and women into our na- 

 tional and social life must be apparent to all. 



The wealth of possibility in our American w^omen is past computa- 

 tion. Deep in their souls are planted the formative ideals of our race — 

 virtue, duty, courage, sincerity, piety. Year by year, century through 

 century, the little plant has been pruned and nurtured, until today we 

 are ready to reap a richer harvest than ever before. But before the 

 harvest can be full, certain elements must be eliminated. Consider the 

 question broadly and fairly; just jvhat is the existing condition of the 

 average American woman today? Is she free? 



A more rational education than of old, greater liberty of thought and 

 action, have done much for women in the last fift}' years, but the tradi- 

 tions of centuries have been too strong for them; the}' have not yet 

 been able to free themselves from the primitive conceptions of the pre- 

 scribed activities and duties of their sex. Their slavery takes various 

 I>hases and forms, but the fetters may, broadly speaking, be traced to 

 a common source — ignorance of self. 



The be-good-and-let-who-will-be-clever ideal of womanhood has still a 

 tremendous hold on the feminine mind. It does not see that mere 

 negative, sentimentally ornamental goodness can never be effective. 

 (Joodness, to be a power in the world, must go hand in hand with 

 cleverness, must exercise itself and grow. In contrast to the inane 

 woman, is the other extreme — the dogmatic Avoman. To her, what I 

 think will have greater force than what is truth. She is apt to dissi- 

 pate her energies on mere abstractions, and, seeking to broaden women's 

 lives, but failing to understand either herself or the wide differences in 

 the needs of the individual life, she attempts generalizations and cries 

 for ''woman's righls" — not the rights of women — somewhat as the 

 French revolutionists clamored for the '"rights of man." 



Women need more positive ideals of goodness and greater individual- 

 ity. They need the broadening and deepening influences of the constant 

 interflow of their lives with the life of their time. To meet these needs, 

 Avonu^n must themselves consciously broaden their interests and look at 

 themselves in their relation to the whole of society. They are too apt 

 to see only what is close to them, and hence to see without sense of pro- 

 l)ortion or relation to natural law. What is it that makes the daily care 

 of the household a drudgery? The too busy housewife must cook one 

 hour what is eaten the next; must dust today what will be dusty again 

 tomorrow; must mend here, patch there; always working, yet never 

 gaining — what is it that makes it all so hopeless? Is it not the failure 

 to see the meaning, the value of these necessities to our health and haj)- 

 piness and t(» understand the proportion of thought and time which 



