m 
 
 
 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2016 
 
 https://archive.org/details/lightfornewtimesOOflet 
 
LIGHT 
 
 FOR NEW TIMES 
 
 A BOOK FOR CATHOLIC GIRLS 
 
 By 
 
 MARGARET FLETCHER 
 
 OXFORD, ENGLAND 
 
 yf' 
 
 
 With a Preface by 
 
 *l Mm 
 
 W. D. STRAPPING SJ.^ 
 
 Wfe. 
 
 
 K3J»- 
 
 'Cfj sCii <3 
 
 New York, Cincinnati Chicago 
 BENZIGER BROTHERS 
 
 Printers to the Holy Apostolic See 
 
 J 905 
 
Nihil obstat: 
 
 Remy Lafort, 
 
 Censor Librorum. 
 
 Imprimatur : 
 
 * JOHN M. FARLEY* 
 
 Archbishop of New York . 
 
 New York, May 27, 1905. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 The nineteenth century, era of change and 
 of unexpected developments as it was, has 
 brought about no change greater than the 
 present altered position of English women. 
 That certain fixed peculiarities must differ- 
 entiate the sexes will always be true, and 
 these must largely shape their respective 
 pathways in life. Actual experience in our 
 own days, however, has made us readjust 
 many of the traditional ideas as to the essen- 
 tial physical weakness and mental inferiority 
 of women. The mental capacity of girls has 
 been proved to be no less susceptible of educa- 
 tional elevation than that of boys ; while the 
 increased stature so noticeable in the women 
 of the present generation speaks for itself as 
 to their physical development. 
 
 Together with the discovery, as we may 
 almost call it, of the intellectual and admin- 
 istrative possibilities latent in women — latent 
 through want of training and opportunity — 
 there has come the necessity for many of 
 them to enter more largely into the active 
 life of the nation. Boards of guardians, 
 
IV 
 
 Light for New Times 
 
 school boards, inspectorships, and many 
 other positions which affect the welfare of 
 the community, no less than the successful 
 management of important industrial enter- 
 prises, have all shown what abilities women 
 possess and their power of using their abili- 
 ties. 
 
 In the course of the last century a new 
 order of things was looming on the horizon, 
 and we are now face to face with some of 
 those new developments. Under modern 
 conditions — conditions which have not halt- 
 ed, but are still on the march — the numbers 
 of women as compared with men introduces 
 a new problem, and requires a new solution 
 for many problems that are old. Only a pro- 
 portion of women will enter upon what has 
 hitherto been deemed the natural, almost ex- 
 clusive, career of womankind — matrimony — 
 from sheer lack of partners. Many women, 
 in increasing numbers, must perforce be their 
 own breadwinners. 
 
 Our generation, like its predecessors, in- 
 herited the tradition that woman was em- 
 phatically a being to be taken care of; one 
 not to be trusted, but hedged in by material 
 safeguards and social regulations, unwritten, 
 but rigid as granite. Safeguards there must 
 be, and social boundaries, but the nature of 
 these safeguards requires adjustment from 
 changing circumstances, and boundaries may 
 have to be moved further on, without, how- 
 
Preface 
 
 v 
 
 ever, ceasing to be boundaries. The new 
 century opens with a new idea that woman is 
 a being who must also be taught to take care 
 of herself, to depend on herself, and even at 
 times to take a share in carrying burdens 
 hitherto exclusively reserved for the shoul- 
 ders of men. 
 
 These are some of the new materials which 
 have to be woven into the fabric of life. It 
 is for us so to arrange things that these new 
 requirements may be fulfilled without any 
 sacrifice of those qualities of heart and mind 
 which form the charm, the refining influence, 
 the moral elevation of womankind. The 
 charm, the refining influence, the moral eleva- 
 tion of woman, is not for herself alone; she 
 is the guardian of these qualities, which 
 flourish not exclusively, but most richly, in 
 her nature. To a large extent she holds them 
 in trust for the human race, and how very 
 much depends upon the manner in which she 
 fulfils that trust, or shall we say, is taught to 
 fulfil it ! 
 
 When Eve was given to Adam she was 
 given as a help, but also as an equal. The 
 Catholic Church has always recognized this 
 equality of the sexes ; and, as in the case of 
 St. Hilda of Whitby, has not hesitated to 
 commit the care of a monastery of men to an 
 abbess. The misnamed Reformation lowered 
 the position of woman, and this lowering of 
 her position is incidentally brought out by 
 
VI 
 
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 the words interpolated into the marriage ser- 
 vice by the Anglican Church, when the wife 
 is made to acknowledge her inferiority when 
 she promises to obey her husband. This 
 promise has no place in Catholic tradition. 
 Catholic marriage is a contract between 
 equals. The Catholic formula is identically 
 the same for both man and wife; the same 
 laws and the same duties are incumbent upon 
 both. It was the new religion of the sixteenth 
 century which debased the status of woman, 
 and invented excuses to emancipate man 
 from the observance of commandments 
 which bind in exactly the same way both 
 man and woman. Eve was the equal, as 
 well as the helpmate, of Adam. She failed 
 in her trust ; she did not help, and she had to 
 bear the punishment of her unfaithfulness. 
 Her daughters have shared her punishment, 
 and have borne the burden of her sin both as 
 individuals and as a body. In the treatment 
 meted out to woman in pre-Christian times 
 and in non-Christian nations we see how she 
 paid the penalty for having lowered, and not 
 raised, the moral standard of mankind. 
 
 But another Eve came, and with the com- 
 ing of Mary Immaculate the social redemp- 
 tion of woman was begun : it would now be 
 possible for woman to regain her legitimate 
 influence. Yet not at once. For woman’s 
 influence, being gentle and persuasive, reach- 
 ing the head through the heart, could not 
 
Preface 
 
 Vll 
 
 flourish in the wild storm of passions let 
 loose by the breaking up of the Roman Em- 
 pire. Centuries must come and go ; the rooted 
 prejudices engendered by the persistence of 
 one type of ideals must fade away, through 
 the old order itself changing and insensibly 
 giving place to the new. The upheavals of 
 social and religious origin must be calmed 
 down, sufficiently, if not entirely ; then, when 
 the storm has swept away into the distance 
 and left peace, even with wreckage, in its 
 track, then with returning calm the gentler 
 forces of nature could work. 
 
 It is a coincidence — it may be more — that 
 the various currents of opinion which were 
 working in many quarters for what we may 
 conveniently, if not quite accurately, term 
 the emancipation of women, came into prom- 
 inence about the time of the declaration of 
 the dogma of the Immaculate Conception. 
 It was a happy coincidence, and, let us also 
 say, a good augury. A new era for women 
 was beginning, and what model could be 
 more appropriate than Mary? In every 
 change there is contained more or less of a 
 reaction; the reaction comes about by the 
 awakening of forces hitherto inoperative, 
 and in the new-born vigor of new forces there 
 is apt to be too much of a reaction. When 
 justly condemning the “too much,” many fail 
 to distinguish, and condemn the reaction it- 
 self, with apparent reason. With all new 
 
viii Light for New Times 
 
 manifestations, time and developments are 
 needed before we can pass a fair and equable 
 verdict. So we must not be surprised if the 
 flood of new ideas involved in the emancipa- 
 tion of woman flowed too far at first. That 
 was only to be expected. Yet not all the 
 flood will flow back into the original chan- 
 nel; many of its waters have come to stay. 
 What are we going to do with them ? We 
 cannot dry up these waters, even if we would ; 
 but why dry them up? They are fertilizing 
 waters, if we know how to conduct them to 
 arid places; if we leave them alone they may 
 form unhealthy pools, unsightly, and sources 
 of danger. But let me drop metaphor. We 
 all realize that changed conditions of life 
 necessitate changed conditions of education. 
 It is no disparagement of the older methods 
 to say that they will not fit our new develop- 
 ments. They were never meant to cope with 
 issues to them unknown. They were wisely 
 framed to meet the requirements of their day 
 — we must as wisely legislate for the require- 
 ments of our own. The essays in this little 
 book are a contribution — one of many, I hope 
 — to meet some actual requirements of our 
 passing day; to enable girls who leave our 
 schools with light hearts, and some with 
 heads as light, to enter upon the life which 
 succeeds school days with some practical 
 warning as to what the realities of life will 
 be. Knowledge, we are truly told, is power ; 
 
Preface 
 
 IX. 
 
 and the career of many girls has suffered an 
 early shipwreck for want of that power 
 which comes from knowledge. Not all can 
 be helped, indeed, not all will let themselves 
 be helped ; that does not absolve us from at 
 least making some attempts. There is a gap 
 in our Catholic literature for girls which 
 needs filling up, and all earnest and practical 
 and intelligent efforts to fill this gap should 
 receive the welcome they deserve. 
 
 W. D. Strapping S.J. 
 
 Oxford, 1903. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 & 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 ‘‘Without the Way there is no going” 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 Liberty 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 Responsibility ... 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 PAGE 
 . . . I 
 
 . .. 2 6 
 
 40 
 
 Professional Life 
 
 58 
 
rJ 
 
 
LIGHT FOR NEW TIMES 
 
 I 
 
 “Without the Way there is no going ”* 
 
 These pages are written for any girl who 
 will read them, but with the particular hope 
 that they may most often fall into the hands 
 of those in whom the joy of life runs strongly 
 and who dream of living strenuously in one 
 way or another. 
 
 Experience of life has convinced me, on 
 the one hand, how appreciative mankind can 
 be when woman approaches at all near to 
 any ideals that have been formed for her, and 
 if possessed of any supernatural or spiritual 
 beauty, how touchingly ready to reverence 
 her and even to be led by her; and, on the 
 other hand, how disastrous the influence of 
 the merely natural woman usually is, how 
 within the circle of her influence all ideals 
 wither, and while the natural in man leads 
 
 * A Kempis. 
 
2 Light for New Times 
 
 him to seek and follow her to his deteriora- 
 tion and ruin, he knows her at last for the 
 enemy of his soul. 
 
 I have observed, besides, a large company 
 of women, without much influence as indi- 
 viduals either for good or evil, victims of a 
 false education, who drift aimlessly along at 
 the mercy of any stray current of thought, 
 without any definite understanding of their 
 own nature or any clear idea of the real 
 meaning of life. Although their personal 
 significance is small, they enervate the so- 
 ciety to which they belong by the aimlessness 
 and uselessness of their lives. 
 
 It was never according to the purpose of 
 Almighty God that woman should be the 
 enemy of man and an instrument of his deg- 
 radation; neither was it part of His design 
 that she should be foolish and weak and a 
 constant source of anxiety to those about her. 
 A helpmeet for man he created her and a 
 comrade for the journey of life, in every re- 
 lationship, in every capacity, and her inter- 
 ests are his and his are hers, and no power on 
 earth can separate the interdependence of one 
 upon the other. If in any society or body of 
 people one generation of women is permitted 
 to grow up unfitted to share its responsibili- 
 ties and labors, the whole society suffers. 
 
 Now Catholic women have behind them a 
 great record of heroism, of endurance, and 
 of suffering bravely borne for the Faith ; they 
 
Without the Way 
 
 3 
 
 have been the true comrades of the men of 
 their time. Those who were cradled under 
 the penal laws and served Almighty God 
 valiantly, have made it possible for you, alone 
 among the girls of England, to be brought up 
 in the only Faith that explains life truly and 
 gives strength to live it rightly. These are 
 days of peace, and days of peace have their 
 own dangers. In times of persecution lights 
 and shadows stand out strongly and duties 
 are obvious, but in times of peace it is easy to 
 let the duty slip by unrecognized and to fail 
 to see things clearly in the new and softer 
 light. 
 
 You, for whom the silver cord which binds 
 you to school life will soon be loosed, have to 
 look to it that you are in no way unworthy of 
 the women of the past. You have to find the 
 key-note of your own generation, you have to 
 learn how to be helpmeets to man under new* 
 conditions, and it is to help you to this end 
 that what follows is written. 
 
 If you saw a girl, whom you knew to have 
 been started upon a journey to a particular 
 place, jump into the first train she saw with- 
 out inquiring where it went to, merely be- 
 cause she thought it fun to be moving along 
 at a great rate, and that it did not much mat- 
 ter in what direction, you would think her a 
 very silly creature. This is exactly what 
 some girls do when they leave school and 
 start upon the journey of life. 
 
4 
 
 Light for New Times 
 
 Is it prudent to tumble out of school life 
 upon so momentous a journey without learn- 
 ing as much as you can about the different 
 roads that run across the world that stretches 
 before you ? And what a contradictory 
 world it is ! Ask one who has traveled half 
 way along the road and he will tell you it is 
 full of beauty and mystery and unsolved 
 problems. Another will tell you it is filled 
 with stern duties and relentless laws; an- 
 other, that it is full of the glamor of strange 
 attractions and resonant with the clamor of 
 human passions and the ceaseless sound, now 
 discordant, now harmonious, of the interac- 
 tion of one personality upon another. One 
 will tell you that it is as a loom in whose 
 warp and woof good and evil are inextricable 
 till the Judgment Day; another, that in the 
 same circumstances one man grows great and 
 his brother abject; and, greatest paradox of 
 all, while one tells you that it is a world full 
 of incident and ceaseless happenings, another 
 tells you that it is a world of endless monot- 
 ony, empty of interest, full of shallow busi- 
 ness, in which loving and hating are done 
 in an equally tepid manner. 
 
 No one will be found to tell you that it is a 
 big playground. 
 
 All who are Catholics will have but one 
 story to tell as to how they found the right 
 road and kept their hearts warm as they went 
 along. They will tell you of a figure on 
 
Without the Way 
 
 5 
 
 whom their eyes were always fixed, seen 
 through the glamor and above the strife, and, 
 very clearly against the wide sky that over- 
 arches life’s monotony, a figure stretched 
 upon the Cross. 
 
 Clearly the start into such a world as this 
 will take some thinking over. It would be 
 wise, too, to see what kind of an outfit you 
 have got together for this journey; if you 
 have had your wits about you during the past 
 few years, it should not be inconsiderable. 
 
 The years that lie behind you have prob- 
 ably been happy ones. The Convent School 
 is a small world in itself, peopled by those of 
 one Faith only, full of order and beauty of 
 work and of play, and in it you have been as 
 sheltered and as carefully tended as if you 
 had been a flower growing in a high-walled 
 garden. You were sheltered like a flower 
 that you might develop strong, healthy roots, 
 which no hand should disturb too soon, and 
 which should be vigorous enough to bear 
 transplanting into any kind of soil. 
 
 In plain language, the main business dur- 
 ing the time of education has been to lay the 
 foundation of your Faith deep down, and this 
 should have included in the doing the devel- 
 oping of all the powers of mind, intellect and 
 heart. This laying of a strong foundation 
 should have set its stamp upon your character 
 and given it stability and an underlying 
 strength of purpose. You who have grown 
 
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 Light for New Times 
 
 up under the very shadow of the mantle of 
 Our Lady, in whose character there is no 
 trace of feebleness or foolishness, should be 
 strong and ready to raise a standard which 
 other women, less well taught than you, 
 could see and follow. But, alas ! it is often 
 and often remarked that Catholic girls are 
 less serious than their neighbors, and that 
 the appearance of womanhood too often 
 conceals the mind and sense of responsibility 
 of a child. 
 
 How comes it that you, who have learned 
 such profound truths, who have been in daily 
 contact with lives of discipline and self- 
 sacrifice, should set about the business of life 
 in a more frivolous spirit than girls who 
 have not had your advantages? 
 
 You have got it into your heads, perhaps, 
 that the world beyond the Convent walls is a 
 place of pleasure. A comical notion this, to 
 those who happen to know something of life. 
 Some of you perhaps reason like this : “The 
 deeper-minded girls will have vocations and 
 become nuns, but my vocation is the world. 
 The world is a place of pleasure and fun. Al- 
 mighty God won’t expect me to aim at a 
 higher standard than will carry me safely 
 along this rather easy road.” 
 
 The real world has been hidden from you ; 
 kindly hands have drawn a veil across it, 
 which has been raised only here and there to 
 show you pleasant places. Why? Not be- 
 
Without the Way 
 
 7 
 
 cause it was so attractive that had you seen 
 all, school life would have seemed a prison 
 house by contrast, but because it happened to 
 contain such ugly things, such bitter strug- 
 gles, such real temptations, such deep suffer- 
 ings, that it was not good you should know of 
 these things until you were possessed of a 
 certain strength and until you had learned 
 something of the joy of life. 
 
 Let us examine a little closely life as it is 
 lived around us to-day, and try to get such 
 true pictures as will be helpful to you just 
 now. Not the whole picture — the time has 
 not come for that yet — but each part must be 
 faithful as far as it goes. Is the prospect a 
 trifle alarming ? A high degree of happiness 
 and much merriment are to be met with in 
 the world if you know the conditions for 
 gaining them, but to grasp at any counterfeit 
 of the real things will surely bring you ac- 
 quaintance with sorrow. When it is a ques- 
 tion of gaining knowledge that shall affect 
 practical conduct, it is well to test the wisdom 
 of books by observations of actual life. 
 
 Books of counsel for behavior in the 
 world are apt to be misleading a few years 
 after they are written, and interesting as his- 
 tory of past manners rather than fingerposts 
 to direct us on thq paths that lie before us. 
 Books of devotion that you may have read, 
 and which have enshrined eternal truths, may 
 nevertheless have puzzled and discouraged 
 
8 
 
 Light for New Times 
 
 you by their hints for the conduct of life, be- 
 cause they were written for another age and 
 another civilization. 
 
 All you who feel that your vocation is in 
 the world have probably also a feeling at the 
 back of your minds, and if you don’t yet rec- 
 ognize its presence you inevitably will some 
 day, that the best state for you is the married 
 state; that in no other state will you find a 
 field for the mysterious powers within you, of 
 which you are beginning to be dimly con- 
 scious, that the sacrament of marriage will 
 furnish the key that will unlock the depths of 
 your nature. Some of you will not have got 
 as far in thought as this, but you will at any 
 rate think it the natural thing that some kind 
 of suitor for your hand should appear upon 
 the horizon some day; and so completely 
 would this even seem to answer to your 
 needs, and to be proper to the spring time of 
 life, that your sense of justice will be hurt if 
 such a person fails to appear ; more particu- 
 larly since everyone will tell you that the mar- 
 ried state is the highest, the happiest, and the 
 safest for a woman, always excepting the 
 religious. 
 
 Let us glance at actual life. It is a matter 
 of fact that very many women who are at- 
 tractive, good, capable, sometimes beautiful, 
 never receive an offer of marriage at all; 
 what a different state of things this is to 
 what novels, story books, or the conversation 
 
Without the Way 
 
 9 
 
 of our friends would lead us to suppose ! what 
 a shock to our sense of romance and of the 
 fitness of things! It is only of late years 
 that the truth has been frankly acknowl- 
 edged; formerly a conventional politeness 
 thought it decent to cover it by the gallant 
 fiction that every single woman remained so 
 by choice. A fiction kindly conceived, but its 
 existence implies a disgrace to conceal, and 
 this must have made it difficult for an un- 
 married woman to feel any dignity in her lot. 
 
 There is no one to blame for this state of 
 affairs. Girls are capable enough of affec- 
 tion and devotion, and if they are far from 
 perfect, they are at any rate in no way below 
 the men of their class. The sober truth we 
 have to face is that, even if some fairy wand 
 could bring all the right people together and 
 endow them with adequate incomes, there 
 would still be many forlorn ladies called to 
 no trysting place, for there would not be 
 enough husbands for all. 
 
 Many causes contribute to bring about this 
 unevenness of numbers, of which wars, dan- 
 gerous professions, and the size of the em- 
 pire, whose distant outposts have to be 
 manned, are among the most obvious. And 
 in truth marrying is no such simple matter, 
 and the more complex the state of society the 
 less simple it becomes. Love should come 
 first, and many years may pass before either 
 the man or the woman meets the person who 
 
IO 
 
 Light for New Times 
 
 can arouse this feeling. Some go through 
 life without ever meeting such a one, or if 
 they do there may be an insuperable obstacle 
 in the way of marriage. Then there is a 
 phenomenon, which every one will have some 
 opportunity of observing, and which will re- 
 main forever something of an enigma. One 
 girl who apparently is in no way above the 
 average in mind or heart, possibly not in good 
 looks, will attract the admiration of many 
 men and have a little court around her ; some 
 man who fails to win her may remain single 
 for her sake. Another girl who seems to 
 have as many gifts remains unnoticed. The 
 want of balance in the numbers of men and 
 women who reach maturity is far from being 
 the only cause that determines single lives. 
 
 All through the ages there have been many 
 women whose lot appears to have been to 
 look on at the heart of life. We may not 
 have heard very much of them ; their fate has 
 not furnished material for the writers of ro- 
 mance, and at a first glance they would not 
 appear to have left their mark upon history. 
 
 What is the meaning of it all? Has Al- 
 mighty God forgotten to provide for them? 
 Does He create immortal souls, endow them 
 with great powers, and then give them no op- 
 portunities for using them ? It would almost 
 seem as if some pious writers have thought 
 so, so persistently do they address women as 
 wife, as mother, as religious, and ignore 
 
Without the Way 
 
 ii 
 
 those other no less real and often far harder 
 vocations. 
 
 At all times lives of hidden sacrifice and 
 work have been lived in the world, which, 
 though they have seemed to pass unrecog- 
 nized, were of vital service to the family or 
 the nation, and whose perfume, though a lit- 
 tle too delicate and thin for the common lik- 
 ing, went up as acceptable incense to Al- 
 mighty God. But there were failures, too; 
 those who, fearing that in missing the best 
 they had missed all, lost heart and their hold 
 on life, and pined away from lack of interest 
 and a sufficient motive for living, leaving 
 undone the work they failed to recognize. 
 
 There would seem to be a shade of sadness 
 over the best of such single lives, until we 
 reflect that no one makes the journey alone. 
 Almighty God has each one by the hand, and 
 to some He whispers secrets which only those 
 can know who are not led along the road of 
 common happiness. If there are dark things 
 in the world there are many fair things, too. 
 God is revealed in a thousand ways, in all the 
 beauty, the intelligence, the order, the har- 
 mony, and the kindness we meet with. He 
 has need of many lives, through whose med- 
 ium He can manifest some of His beauty in 
 ugly places, of His order in chaos, of His 
 light in darkness. He has need of those in 
 the world, who, just in the dull places He has 
 appointed them, will permit Him to unseal 
 
12 
 
 Light for New Times 
 
 their eyes and open their ears to feel His 
 presence in common things. 
 
 And for this manifold revelation He has 
 need of every soul He has created. We can- 
 not suppose Almighty God to be unaware 
 that He creates many women whom He 
 neither destines for married life nor for any 
 great achievement. He who is infinite jus- 
 tice does not reward one vocation in a less 
 degree than another, and whatever your por- 
 tion, it has been allotted to you for your ulti- 
 mate good. He will work His will upon 
 each one, to reach the heart and shape the 
 character. One He will soften with human 
 love, another He will strengthen by loneli- 
 ness, another He will hew into shape by hard 
 blows of pain or dishonor or despair. 
 
 The only possible failure is in rebellion and 
 resistance. You cannot foresee your share 
 of life, and you certainly cannot choose it, ex- 
 cept in the limited sense in which you can 
 choose to exert yourself and make the utmost 
 of your opportunities, or to sit idle. If mar- 
 riage should be your lot, will you be less fit 
 for your vocation because you have been 
 capable, helpful, awake to the needs of others 
 and the many-sidedness of life in the years 
 that went before? And if marriage should 
 not come, and you have drifted on aimlessly, 
 frivolously, and filled with thoughts of self- 
 indulgence and amusements, you will awaken 
 to a sense of the emptiness and uselessness of 
 
Without the Way 
 
 13 
 
 your life at an age when it is not easy to fill 
 it ; you will try to take up some work which 
 your previous life has not fitted you to do 
 well, and you will swell the lists of the fussy, 
 the incompetent, the would-be helpers of the 
 world. Or a worse fate still may await you. 
 You may find yourself among those ship- 
 wrecked, lonely souls — and everyone who 
 has reached middle age knows some such — 
 who were as well born as you, as well started 
 in life, and as gay at the outset, and who 
 lived to fill the void in their lives with sensual 
 pleasure, and ended in drink and dishonor. 
 
 It is an eternal law that those who will not 
 work shall not live, shall at any rate gradu- 
 ally deteriorate until they cease to live in any 
 high sense of the term. There are multitudi- 
 nous ways of working; an attempt to' im- 
 prove and widen the mind or to acquire the 
 art of social intercourse is real work if it in- 
 volves effort of one kind or another. But ef- 
 fort there must be, and some sort of struggle 
 of your higher faculties towards develop- 
 ment, if there is to be a wholesome life. 
 
 It is highly important that the work should 
 be rightly directed and itself in harmony with 
 your nature as a woman. And now I come 
 to the heart of the whole matter. The life’s 
 history of every woman, from the stupidest 
 to the most brilliantly intellectual, from the 
 most shrewish nature to the sweetest, turns 
 upon the use of the affections. 
 
14 
 
 Light for New Times 
 
 The explanation to the curiously diverse 
 characters we meet can be found in affections 
 undisciplined and run riot, affections thwart- 
 ed and starved, affections turned back upon 
 self, or affections wholly given back to God 
 the Giver. It is difficult at first sight to be- 
 lieve that all the hard, peevish, worldly and 
 selfish women we meet have become so by 
 misuse of the power they seem most to lack ; 
 but it is true. Now, whatever profession, or 
 work, or sphere of usefulness is entered upon, 
 the affections must not only be disciplined, 
 they must be provided for. Every Catholic 
 girl knows that she owes the fundamental af- 
 fections of her heart to God, but in the world 
 she owes, too, affection to a great many who 
 need it, and the right giving of this is the ex- 
 pression of her love for God. It has been 
 somewhat the modern fashion, while cham- 
 pioning what has been called the intellectual 
 emancipation of woman, to forget her more 
 essential needs. 
 
 If any of you are to go out into the world 
 and either earn your own living or enter one 
 of the many careers now open to women, you 
 will see a good deal of the results of this 
 mistake. 
 
 A clever girl often starts life in an inde- 
 pendent spirit, and feeling the world to be so 
 full of abstract interests and serious pleas- 
 ures, she imagines that she can ignore the 
 life of the affections, and as she supposes, 
 
 1 
 
Without the Way 
 
 i5 
 
 “live like a man.” The crucial day when her 
 emotional life will assert itself may be de- 
 ferred, but it will come as inevitably as death, 
 and if it has been neglected there will be a 
 disaster of one kind or another. 
 
 We Catholics at any rate are not likely to 
 fall into this mistake and to undervalue the 
 real womanly qualities. 
 
 Our danger is rather in restricting the 
 fields of their exercise, and supposing that 
 they are limited to a very few and obvious 
 ones. We are to discuss in the following 
 papers where these fields lie, and how in each 
 one a girl may find an outlet for her womanly 
 nature, and put into the work she lays her 
 hand to that atmosphere of well-ordered af- 
 fection which is necessary to the world as a 
 complement to the more masculine virtues. 
 The first business then for you in starting on 
 your journey is to consider on what road you 
 can develop your nature as Almighty God in- 
 tended, how most usefully to others, most 
 happily for yourself. 
 
 But how about this outfit you are to take 
 with you ? 
 
 It should be the same for all — Self-control. 
 
 If it is true that the most important prob- 
 lem a woman has to face is the government 
 of her emotional life, then for all, no matter 
 of what rank or state in life, the power of 
 self-control is absolutely necessary. The end 
 of school life ought to see you all with at any 
 
i6 
 
 Light for New Times 
 
 rate a modest outfit, if only you will recog- 
 nize its value and not throw it away in the 
 first year of liberty. Affections, and the 
 emotional life, may be the largest gift you 
 have received, but the gift is not to rule you ; 
 you must hold the reins and be in command 
 always. 
 
 Emotions that have got out of hand are a 
 terribly destructive force. Uncontrolled and 
 undirected force may cause disturbance and 
 disaster — it can never influence. When in a 
 tragic scene, a great actress appears to be 
 swept away by the tide of her grief, and then 
 to compel the tears of her audience, she has in 
 reality perfect control over the grief she is 
 interpreting, and knows quite well that if she 
 lost it for a moment, and were at the mercy 
 of her feelings, she would lose the sym- 
 pathy of her audience at the same moment, 
 who would remain unmoved and dry-eyed. 
 But you Catholic girls, who, in your convent 
 schools, have grown up under the very 
 shadow of our Lady, should need no illustra- 
 tions to persuade you that there is nothing 
 feeble in the highest type of womanhood. 
 Nothing morally weak, and no moments 
 when the spirit abdicates its supremacy, and 
 leaves the body to dictate the thought or the 
 deed. 
 
 Have you ever felt that the small rules 
 which you have been obliged to observe, were 
 just a teasing part of the machinery of school 
 
Without the Way 
 
 1 7 
 
 life, from which you would soon be freed? 
 If so, you have altogether failed to under- 
 stand them rightly. 
 
 They bear the same relation to your future 
 life as learning the goose step does to that of 
 a soldier. The recruit may think the exer- 
 cises very meaningless, and fancy he would 
 make a fine soldier without all this fuss; 
 but his superiors know perfectly well that, 
 unless he learns to respond instantly to the 
 word of command, the enemy is likely to see 
 his back when the critical hour arrives. 
 
 You have to take these early lessons in dis- 
 cipline on trust, very much as a soldier takes 
 his drill, because you know no more of the 
 dangers of life than a recruit does of real 
 battle. 
 
 Those who do know, and have faced temp- 
 tations, and have seen others falling on all 
 sides for want of training, have framed them 
 for your benefit. They are the outcome of 
 the experience of generations, nor can you 
 gain the kind of wisdom that is needed to re- 
 shape these rules, except by living, so that it 
 is altogether too soon for you to set up as 
 critics and reformers. 
 
 Your first business is to struggle for the 
 mastery over yourself, and to learn to obey 
 promptly, and to believe that in so doing you 
 are preparing yourself to face ordeals that 
 are mercifully hidden from the spring time of 
 your life. 
 
i8 
 
 Light for New Times 
 
 Let us suppose that you have gained a cer- 
 tain mastery in such things as form the rou- 
 tine of school life. This is something not to 
 be despised, but it is only a small part of the 
 kind of control which as a girl you should be 
 aiming at. 
 
 You have a strong emotional life within 
 you, and if it is not to be your servant, it will 
 be a most convenient ally of the devil, who, 
 by its aid, will fool you and trick you at every 
 turn. 
 
 Can you control either laughter or tears 
 when you wish to ? 
 
 You may ask, why, if tears and laughter 
 are the natural language of grief and joy, 
 common to both men and women, should we 
 be continually trying to control them, or be 
 ashamed to own that we laugh or cry our 
 eyes out whenever it suits us? 
 
 Just because they are a language that 
 should express the real self, and are powers 
 intimately connected with the life of the 
 body, they must come under the rule of the 
 spirit. 
 
 No person is in the least expressing her 
 real feelings or her truest self when she 
 bursts into tears every time she is moved to 
 pity or anger, or her vanity or self-love is 
 hurt. No one is a bit nearer understanding 
 the real extent or cause of her grief, but all 
 can see that her nerves are out of order, and 
 that she has lost control over them. The 
 
Without the Way 
 
 19 
 
 point at which the pressure of emotion is so 
 great, that tears are formed and must be 
 shed, is sooner reached in a woman than in 
 a man. Being physically weaker she often 
 needs help from a man, and tears of this 
 kind, tears that come because the limits of a 
 real self-control are passed, are a natural ap- 
 peal for such help, or may be a natural relief 
 for grief, for which no human help is pos- 
 sible. 
 
 But tears cease to be a language and be- 
 come a tyranny and a nuisance to all around, 
 when they come at the call of every trivial 
 emotion or uneasiness. And how bitterly we 
 may come to regret a slavery that may seem 
 a small matter in the beginning. 
 
 Some day, when you are moved deeply, 
 you would give all you have to help others in 
 trouble or pain, to be of use to them, but you 
 cannot steady your own voice or master your 
 agitation, the tears come, you increase the 
 distress of the sufferer and are a hindrance 
 where you would be a help. 
 
 Self-control is not gained in a moment. 
 Many a one, who at first could hardly steady 
 her knees to carry her down the ward of a 
 hospital, has become a reliable nurse in the 
 operating-room. All the more valuable by 
 reason of the nerve sensitiveness that made 
 control hard to gain. 
 
 It is exactly because a woman is naturally 
 quick of perception and tender of heart, that 
 
20 
 
 Light for New Times 
 
 it is her paramount duty to govern her 
 nerves, for that is what it comes to, if she is 
 to be of any use in the world. The share of 
 the world’s work that will be eternally hers, 
 however customs change and fashions come 
 and go, will be the care of the young, the 
 weak, the sick, the aged and the afflicted, all 
 tasks that need long patience and genuine 
 love, but also the power of enduring long 
 nervous strain. Woman, we are constantly 
 told, is weaker than man, but if in her own 
 province she is not the stronger, she has 
 failed miserably in her womanhood. What 
 is required of us in the way of self-mastery 
 is, that we shall be ready when duty calls, 
 with eye and hand well under control, our- 
 selves forgotten, our minds filled with the 
 needs of another. 
 
 But this power of repression, if gained, is 
 only one side of self-control ; there is another, 
 too often overlooked, but so entirely neces- 
 sary to our own and other people’s happiness, 
 that it needs careful consideration. The first 
 side of self-mastery is a repressing of wrong 
 inclinations, or a checking of an ill-timed or 
 exaggerated expression of right ones ; but we 
 havebesides to learn alanguageof expression. 
 
 We have a personality, the gift of God, 
 and we must honestly and reverently see that 
 this individuality of ours is so liberated that 
 others can recognize and appreciate it as God 
 intended. 
 
Without the Way 
 
 21 
 
 Can we show sympathy, or when we ear- 
 nestly desire to say a kind thing, are we pos- 
 sessed by a dumb devil of shyness? 
 
 Here is surely a want of self-mastery. 
 The kind thought is there, also the wish to 
 utter it in some intelligible way, but we do 
 not possess the key to set the works moving 
 somehow, or it has grown rusty, or we have 
 never tried to turn it. 
 
 This burying of faculties that should be in 
 daily use is the cause of much misery in after 
 life, of misunderstanding, of isolations, or 
 lost opportunities untold. Seeing how strong 
 is the life of the affections in a woman, and 
 how uncertain her chance of meeting with an 
 occasion, or an individual, that shall require 
 all she has to give, or who can give all that 
 she feels to need, and seeing what a source of 
 danger are unused and pent-up powers, is it 
 not common prudence to dig many channels 
 along which the affections can continually 
 flow, irrigating the dry places of the world as 
 they go? This second kind of self-control is 
 in reality the digging of such channels. 
 When a little child runs and throws its arms 
 round the neck of some one it loves, and hugs 
 her so boisterously as almost to upset her, we 
 feel that this outburst is rather attractive, 
 that it shows there is good stuff behind, but 
 that the child will have to learn another way 
 of showing love before it grows up. And yet 
 it would be rather sad, if, when the child had 
 
22 
 
 Light for New Times 
 
 become a man, he had become so controlled, 
 in the one-sided sense of the term, as to have 
 no power of showing what was in his heart. 
 Or — and this is so very English — could only 
 at some great crisis in life show in some crude 
 volcanic way what subterranean fires have 
 been smouldering. 
 
 A woman, more frequently than a man, 
 experiences the need to express ordinary 
 sympathy and kindness, and to communicate 
 some felt happiness or merriment — needs, 
 in a word, to be true to her nature. 
 
 Women who have not acquired a language 
 of expression, accurate in that it has tri- 
 umphed over shyness and stopped short of 
 exaggeration, do themselves scant justice. 
 
 It is as much a duty to force out a kind 
 word and to show the right and honest affec- 
 tion, as it is to check the unkind word and 
 repress the wrong feeling. 
 
 Reason must decide if the feeling be right 
 or wrong, and if right, out it must come and 
 show itself. Its first appearance may be 
 clumsy enough, but it will acquire fresh grace 
 and ease of deportment every time it makes 
 its bow. This will be easy, or difficult, ac- 
 cording to the natural character, surround- 
 ings, and opportunities of the individual. 
 The less gifted and less fortunate women 
 will be those to suffer most in after life from 
 a neglect of this art. The more they are 
 dumb, the more likely are they to be lonely. 
 
Without the Way 
 
 23 
 
 One often sees some poor, shy creature on 
 the point of trying to say something that she 
 really feels, a small speech of gratitude, for 
 instance; she grows so nervous and uncom- 
 fortable that the trouble spreads and the feel- 
 ing of uneasiness becomes general. There is 
 a growing dread of some crude manifestation 
 of emotion, and a moment that should have 
 been instinct with graceful kindliness is hur- 
 ried over, and everyone is glad to be through 
 with it. 
 
 The whole thing may be summed up as the 
 duty to take care that the version of our- 
 selves which we present for the inspection of 
 others shall be expressive of the best that is 
 in us. 
 
 This dual mastery, this power of holding 
 back unworthy or unreal emotions, and of 
 bringing the nobler ones into action and 
 training, enables us to do this. 
 
 It is impossible to begin too young; the 
 right exercising of them is a long business, 
 long in proportion to the depth and strength 
 of the material to work upon. 
 
 Many a polished and equable manner in 
 middle age is a travesty of life within, which 
 it conceals, and is in itself the result of con- 
 tinual effort to hide feelings and thoughts 
 which should have been uttered. If we all 
 possessed these powers, there would be in- 
 calculably more real friendships in the world. 
 The world is not a big playground then, and 
 
24 
 
 Light for New Times 
 
 if it were, we that should play in it have 
 within us the germ of a disease contracted 
 at the fall, so that even if outer circum- 
 stances did not compel us to self-discipline, 
 we should be compelled from within. 
 
 On the threshold of life we one and all 
 need, irrespective of our talents, our charms, 
 our fortunes and our position, this double 
 power of self-control. 
 
 We cannot determine our own state of 
 life ; our lot may be the very opposite to what 
 we should have imagined would suit us best. 
 
 The wisest course is to be prepared to face 
 the least easy. 
 
 According to the law of natural life women 
 are created to be wives and mothers, but 
 there is a supernatural life which not only 
 sanctifies the married state, but also calls in- 
 dividuals to the religious state and to other 
 spheres of happiness and usefulness. These 
 latter states are more difficult, in so far as it 
 is harder to live in a way which involves a 
 continual sailing against the stream of nature 
 than in one that sails with it. 
 
 I would not dare forecast a future of 
 virtue and happiness for any girl who has 
 not begun to acquire some self-mastery by 
 the time she is entrusted with a certain 
 amount of liberty, for such a prophecy would 
 give the lie to all that I have observed in life. 
 
 The key-note of this generation is not that 
 of the last; you are entering upon liberties 
 
 f 
 
Without the Way 
 
 25 
 
 that your mothers never dreamed of, you 
 have new opportunities, you have also new 
 dangers to face, you certainly have new work 
 to do, and you have to fit yourself for the 
 work. 
 
 In the mind of God is foreshadowed for 
 each one of you a beautiful and attractive 
 character, your possible self, your certain 
 self, if you conquer the hindrances to grace; 
 but, in the as yet unplanted wilderness of 
 each girl’s soul of you, there should be a 
 voice crying: “Prepare ye the ways of the 
 Lord; make straight His paths.” 
 
Liberty 
 
 The Law of the Jungle 
 
 Now this is the law of the Jungle — as old and as true 
 as the sky; 
 
 And the wolf that shall keep it may prosper, but the 
 wolf that shall break it shall die. 
 
 As the creeper that girdles the tree-trunk the Law run- 
 neth forward and back — 
 
 For the strength of the pack is the wolf, and the strength 
 of the wolf is the pack. 
 
 Kipling. 
 
 You are going to gain freedom? Well, that 
 depends mainly on yourself. You are soon 
 to be free of school rules. We will assume 
 that you are reasonable (that is assuming a 
 great deal!), that you are free, in that your 
 spirit is in no way the slave of your body, 
 and that you know the value of freedom well 
 enough to be anxious not to break a moral 
 law and become a slave ; but there is another 
 law, curious, intricate, puzzling, the social 
 law of the great world you are entering, very 
 literally “A law of the Jungle.” 
 
 If the world were entirely Christian, there 
 would be one law, but as things are, we may 
 compare the Christians and Christian com- 
 munities in the world to cultivated oases in a 
 
Liberty 
 
 2 7 
 
 great jungle of tangled vegetation and un- 
 tamed life, in which one creature wars and 
 struggles with another. Only very imper- 
 fectly have the laws, which may be discerned 
 as in some way regulating this tangle and 
 disorder, yielded, as yet, to Christian in- 
 fluence. 
 
 Your position with regard to this law is 
 different from that of girls brought up more 
 in the world than you have been. 
 
 They have learned it gradually, uncon- 
 sciously, and have developed a whole set of 
 protective instincts and perceptions that act 
 as a kind of alarm signals, warning them of 
 the danger of law breaking; you have to set 
 about studying it as a preparation for enjoy- 
 ing liberty. 
 
 The Jungle law is the result of experience, 
 and embodies a working compromise be- 
 tween conflicting beliefs and ideals ; it is not 
 always logical or just, but it is in actual oper- 
 ation, and to break it is to forfeit freedom. 
 
 This law is not immutable, for it is in con- 
 stant process of change and evolution ; but it 
 is inexorable. 
 
 Mark the difference. While the individual 
 conscience has from the beginning of time 
 been in exactly the same relation to Almighty 
 God that it is to-day, and right and wrong 
 stand opposed to each other as they have ever 
 done, mankind as a whole has been undergo- 
 ing a civilizing process, and the civilizing has 
 
28 
 
 Light for New Times 
 
 been in the main upon Christian lines. Now 
 had you happened to be living some centuries 
 ago, and suddenly taken it into your head to 
 make an excursion alone and unattended into 
 either town or country, you would certainly 
 have met with some kind of violence or ter- 
 rifying experience, and in no sense of the 
 word would you have been free, for you 
 would have been at the mercy of rough peo- 
 ple of half-tamed passions and instincts, and 
 — here is the point — you would have broken 
 the law of the Jungle as they understood it, 
 and by this act you would have given them, 
 in their opinion, a perfect right to show their 
 teeth and claws. 
 
 By acting in the same way to-day you 
 would incur none of these risks, for you 
 would be breaking no Jungle laws as now 
 recognized, people generally having come to 
 see that the physically weak have equal rights 
 with the strong ; but the tooth and the claw 
 are there all the same, and the Jungle law is 
 there; it has only retreated more into the 
 background, and when it comes into opera- 
 tion it is as relentless as ever. It should be 
 your business to find out how it works to-day. 
 For instance, every town has its unwritten 
 laws: there are everywhere streets or dis- 
 tricts which it is not prudent to visit alone or 
 at certain hours. Sometimes there is even a 
 danger to safety; and, at all times, to in- 
 fringe one of these unwritten laws is to lay 
 
Liberty 
 
 29 
 
 yourself open to be mistaken for someone 
 who has forfeited respect. 
 
 You might be walking down the streets of 
 a town, filled with orderly, well-mannered 
 people, and wondering how it ever came to be 
 supposed that girls could not take care of 
 themselves anywhere and everywhere, and 
 reflecting if there are wicked people they keep 
 well out of sight; and then you might turn 
 down another street, one where the Jungle 
 law decrees ladies do not walk except at the 
 call of necessity or duty, and a whole under- 
 world seems to have come to the surface : you 
 might find yourself annoyed, insulted, fright- 
 ened, and treated with disrespect, although 
 you were behaving exactly as you had done 
 in the other street. 
 
 Here are the tooth and claw showing 
 again, as ready as ever in the old days to do 
 harm to any who have strayed into their 
 haunts. In neither case would your act in 
 ignoring the law have been that of a re- 
 former, but the outcome of an ignorance of 
 the state of society in which you lived, or 
 such a piece of idiotic foolhardiness as often 
 accompanies feeble intelligence. 
 
 You may wonder how the law ever comes 
 to change, if to act in defiance of it has such 
 fatal consequences. 
 
 No improvement is ever effected by those 
 who have merely failed to recognize it. Un- 
 derstand that the Jungle law is not in itself 
 
30 
 
 Light for New Times 
 
 cruel, but protective, and may be likened to a 
 wall set up between the land in which virtu- 
 ous and secure lives may be lived and the 
 unclaimed land inhabited by those who prey 
 upon the weak in acts of cruelty and violence. 
 
 Now it happens in the course of time that 
 tracts of land on the wild side of the wall fall 
 under cultivation, are reclaimed in fact by 
 those who have tilled the ground on the 
 boundary line, and may safely be visited; 
 their original inhabitants have fallen back to 
 wilder places. 
 
 The wall remains standing until some peo- 
 ple taller and more thoughtful than the rest 
 look over and say, “this land is ready for us, 
 there is no longer need of this wall, which 
 must be pulled down now and moved further 
 back, where it will again be useful as a ram- 
 part.” 
 
 There is always an outcry from those who 
 cannot see over, and do not believe the new 
 land is desirable, and are naturally timid of 
 the risk, but no sooner is the wall down than 
 all but a few enter into the new possession 
 gladly. 
 
 Here is a practical illustration. Some 
 years ago it was not considered correct for 
 girls to attend even dances in private houses 
 unless each had her chaperon. The custom 
 survived from a time when behavior was less 
 decorous, and girls very simple and easily 
 led, and men less trustworthy. 
 
Liberty 
 
 3i 
 
 When under new influences girls became 
 more dignified and self-respecting, and man- 
 ners generally more refined, chaperons be- 
 gan to see that they were hardly needed in 
 such numbers, until now at small dances the 
 hostess herself is often considered all-suffi- 
 cient. 
 
 Observe, this change has not come about 
 because ideas regarding the behavior at balls 
 are less strict than they were, but because 
 girls have by their behavior shown them- 
 selves deserving that more confidence should 
 be placed in them. Should any girl enter a 
 social circle where these ideas prevail, under 
 the impression that this liberty entitled her 
 to behave in as fast and ill-bred a way as she 
 pleased, she would soon learn a lesson — she 
 would be quietly cold-shouldered out, until 
 she had to drop into a set less refined and less 
 desirable. 
 
 Those on the right side of the jungle wall 
 feel that they have to protect themselves, and 
 if someone comes among them bringing in 
 the manners of those on the wrong side, they 
 instantly recognize the school in which the 
 manners have been acquired, and shut the 
 door upon her as soon as may be. 
 
 You cannot understand the principle un- 
 derlying these laws too thoroughly, for there 
 is a distinct danger that when you leave 
 school and hear much talk of liberty and the 
 new ideas, as you certainly will, you may 
 
32 
 
 Light for New Times 
 
 jump to the conclusion that you can safely do 
 anything 1 , provided that you yourself can see 
 no moral harm in it. 
 
 It is perfectly true that you must promptly 
 obey every warning of danger that your con- 
 science gives you — but the converse is not 
 true ; it is not safe to embark on any course of 
 conduct in the world against which your con- 
 science does not warn you, for conscience 
 cannot make you aware of dangers of which 
 your intelligence and reason are ignorant. 
 You may feel impatient and a little indignant 
 that so many people, even strangers, should 
 busy themselves about your behavior, and 
 the phrase, “I can quite well take care of my- 
 self,” may rise to your lips, and you may 
 think, “why do people imagine that because I 
 am a girl I am not to be trusted?” This so- 
 licitude does not spring from a poor opinion 
 of the character of girls, and it is not merely 
 a matter of trusting. 
 
 In the eyes of Almighty God a boy and a 
 girl are of equal value. If a boy sins, his 
 guilt is equal to that of a girl ; the punish- 
 ment is the same, each has the same certainty 
 of forgiveness, the ways of seeking and ob- 
 taining the forgiveness are identical. 
 
 The consequences of breaking the Jungle 
 law are different; the weight of its punish- 
 ment falls unevenly, falls immeasurably more 
 heavily upon the weaker. 
 
 There are sins a woman may fall into, the 
 
Liberty 
 
 33 
 
 committing of which, in so far as she may 
 have been untaught, unhelped, and the victim 
 of a bad upbringing, may not have involved 
 great guilt in the eyes of Almighty God, but 
 may have involved the breaking of one of the 
 Jungle laws, whose punishment lasts the 
 length of life. 
 
 It is because it is possible for a girl, 
 through ignorance, to run the risk of incur- 
 ring an injury from which there is no com- 
 plete redress in this life, that all men and 
 women with any goodness and chivalry in 
 them constitute themselves her friends, and 
 so many knights errant in her behalf. They 
 have lived long enough to have seen the 
 Jungle law, when broken, dealing out its 
 uneven retribution, and they feel the pity 
 of it. 
 
 We are each of us to a certain extent the 
 creatures of environment. 
 
 An animal is strongest in those qualities 
 which his surroundings have made necessities 
 of his existence, such as swiftness, or cun- 
 ning, or daring. 
 
 For the same reason human beings are 
 likely to be dependent or independent, 
 thoughtful and reasonable, or careless or im- 
 pulsive, according as the circumstances of 
 their lives have called the one or the other 
 qualities into play. 
 
 A new environment will develop new qual- 
 ities in due course, but the dangerous time is 
 
34 
 
 Light for New Times 
 
 that immediately following the change. It 
 would be possible to emerge from school well 
 equipped with the double self-control we con- 
 sidered in the last chapter, and yet to make 
 serious mistakes unless awake to the need of 
 a guide. 
 
 How then can you best learn what you are 
 free to do, what not ? 
 
 All are not placed in the same circum- 
 stances ; some of you have homes and careful 
 parents always at hand to advise, others of 
 you will have to go among strangers, and 
 others again will be obliged to enter some 
 profession and earn a living. 
 
 In whatsoever surroundings you find your- 
 selves there will always be someone whom 
 you will observe to be generally respected. In 
 school life certain girls exercised a good in- 
 fluence and had a healthy tone about them, 
 and, whatever social circle you may enter, 
 you will observe that these girls have their 
 counterparts. It is with such you would do 
 wisely to take counsel. 
 
 No one changes a state of life without hav- 
 ing much to learn and being obliged to seek 
 the shelter of someone’s wing at first. It 
 matters a great deal whose wing. Many 
 good people deserving all respect do not keep 
 up with the times in their ideas of the per- 
 missible, and imagine a Jungle wall to be 
 still standing long after it has been removed. 
 It would be a mistake to consult one of these. 
 
Liberty 
 
 35 
 
 On whatever other subjects one may prof- 
 itably seek counsel of one's grandmother, it 
 would be foolish to consult her upon the cur- 
 rent etiquette of the day if she had retired 
 from society for many years. 
 
 Choose someone of your world, of your 
 social set, of your new profession, not the 
 one most likely to fall in with your own in- 
 clinations, but the one most deserving of es- 
 teem, and you will avoid the risk of making 
 a false start and being gravely misjudged. 
 
 The dwellers in the Jungle make no allow- 
 ances for ignorance ; they assume you must 
 know what they all know, and should they 
 see you in the wrong place and the wrong 
 set they would conclude that you had a 
 natural affinity to both. 
 
 I think it will be helpful to take a brief 
 survey of the social changes that have been 
 going on in the non-Catholic world during 
 the last half century, especially with regard 
 to women, and to endeavor to understand 
 what forces have been at work to bring about 
 the present state of society. 
 
 You will come across much that will as- 
 tonish and shock you, much that will strike 
 you as brilliant and dazzling, and not a little 
 that will command your respect. You will 
 hear above all a great deal of extravagant 
 talk of liberty, of the right to live your own 
 life, and of independence, and if you are ob- 
 servant you will discover that these ideas are 
 
36 Light for New Times 
 
 often confused, contradictory, and have no 
 stability of belief underlying them. 
 
 What is known as the “woman’s move- 
 ment” began in the middle of the last cen- 
 tury, and was a reaction from the state of 
 oppression that could never have taken ex- 
 actly the form it did had the country kept 
 the faith. 
 
 To whatever extent Catholic women may 
 have suffered from lack of education from 
 time to time, they have always enjoyed a lib- 
 erty that exists nowhere outside of the 
 Church, liberty in the spiritual life. 
 
 The Church has ever recognized their free- 
 dom to choose the religious life, and the pos- 
 sibility of their ascending to heights of sanc- 
 tity and knowledge. 
 
 Devotion to our Lady fostered the belief in 
 the dignity of womanhood, and the sacra- 
 mental nature of marriage raised the position 
 of women very high in the home. Outside 
 the Church things were different. Frag- 
 mentary forms of Christianity survived in 
 the separated churches. 
 
 Faith in the Incarnation was tampered 
 with, devotion to our Lady ceased, marriage 
 was no longer recognized as a sacrament, 
 and ideas concerning women inevitably de- 
 teriorated. 
 
 Since the suppression of the monasteries, 
 until the last century, no effort was made to 
 educate them. 
 
Liberty 37 
 
 Their position in married life was one of 
 distinct inferiority. The unmarried led nar- 
 row, starved, and dependent lives, and it is 
 no exaggeration to say that they were 
 looked upon with a certain amount of con- 
 tempt, and that it was the fashion to make, at 
 their expense, jests in the worst possible taste. 
 
 Failings, that were the inevitable outcome 
 of their surroundings and narrowed hori- 
 zons, were regarded as inherent in feminine 
 nature, for mankind lacked, and outside the 
 Church still lacks, a fixed ideal for woman- 
 hood. 
 
 A feeling of unrest and dissatisfaction 
 with the existing state of things grew, until 
 it resulted in a great educational movement 
 which swept over the face of the nation, and 
 in a surprisingly short space of time the 
 doors of many professions and useful careers 
 were opened to women. The ideas of parents 
 with regard to the education and future ca- 
 reers of their daughters underwent a great 
 change. The movement was, in the main, in 
 the right direction, and the zeal and serious- 
 ness with which girls set about availing 
 themselves of the new opportunities were be- 
 yond all praise. 
 
 Much of the knowledge and influence they 
 now gained was used in the interests of poor 
 and less fortunate women, and more than one 
 Act of Parliament owes its origin to the 
 energy and devotion of women. 
 
38 Light for New Times 
 
 It is not surprising that in a movement so 
 universal, eccentricities and extravagances 
 should have occurred, and that in its early 
 stages individuals rushed to extremes and 
 sacrificed many of the graces of womanhood. 
 Nor is it surprising that a good deal of re- 
 grettable and unwholesome fiction has come 
 from the pen of women. Through the talent 
 and artistic power of much modern litera- 
 ture, the absence of any bed-rock of belief or 
 standard of right and wrong is only too 
 apparent. 
 
 The courage which women had acquired in 
 availing themselves of the new advantages, 
 and the intellectual power attained, when not 
 restrained by faith or illuminated by revela- 
 tion, developed in many instances into license 
 of thought and a reckless, irresponsible 
 handling in fiction of the very foundations 
 of morality. 
 
 You Catholic girls are able to enter these 
 new liberties at an immense advantage. You 
 are in the position of travelers with a com- 
 pass, who need not be asking the way from 
 every chance passer-by. You should be able 
 to direct those whom you meet upon the jour- 
 ney. Do not allow yourselves to be dazzled 
 by the brilliance and intellectual power you 
 may meet with. You have the true founda- 
 tion, and if you will exert yourselves you can 
 have the intellectual power, too, and then you 
 will become helpers of many who are poor in 
 
Liberty 
 
 39 
 
 the things in which you are rich. You need 
 then, as you stand on the threshold of life, 
 self-control, which we considered in the last 
 chapter, and an intelligent understanding of 
 the new environment you are to enter, before 
 you can hope for any measure of real liberty. 
 Indeed, this is no world in which to be idle 
 and frivolous! 
 
 2 3 8 19 
 
in 
 
 Responsibility 
 
 The heaven of heaven is the Lord's : but the earth He 
 has given to the children of men. —P salm cxiii. 16. 
 
 We may define a responsibility as a task to 
 be done or a standard to be attained, which 
 we cannot leave undone or unattained with- 
 out harm to ourselves or others. For ex- 
 ample, health is a responsibility, which we 
 cannot neglect without injury to ourselves, 
 and indirectly through ourselves to other peo- 
 ple. If carefully thought over, we shall see 
 that there is a responsibility connected with 
 every gift and opportunity that we have, and 
 that the desire to be rid of part of the toil 
 and effort connected with our obligations is 
 as old as the Fall, and was first voiced in that 
 guilty cry of Cain, “Am I my brother’s 
 keeper ?” All down the ages, in one form or 
 another, that questioning cry has been sent 
 up in excuse for neglect or wrong done, and 
 Almighty God has answered it plainly 
 enough across the pages of history. Ever 
 since the Fall there has been no choice for 
 man, if he wish to win any blessing for him- 
 self or others, but to toil and put forth effort. 
 
 Not to bewilder ourselves between our 
 
 ) 
 
Responsibility 
 
 4i 
 
 own obligations and those of others, let us 
 consider what are the chief responsibilities 
 laid upon Catholic girls who are to live in the 
 world. Naturally these unfold themselves 
 gradually to the individual and present them- 
 selves in small and simple things at first. It 
 is necessary, however, to have a broad notion 
 as to what are the especial needs of our times, 
 that we may the more readily recognize our 
 own responsibilities when we meet them. 
 
 What we do, and what we may be capable 
 of doing some day, depends entirely on what 
 we are, and happily there is enough scope in 
 the small responsibilities laid upon us at 
 home, in the management of our clothes, of 
 our money and of our relationships with the 
 rest of the household, to test what we are, 
 and to what extent we are capable of under- 
 taking larger duties. 
 
 But there is one paramount duty for each 
 Catholic girl upon leaving school, and that is 
 to use every opportunity in her way of de- 
 veloping herself and of continuing her edu- 
 cation, in order to reach the very high level 
 of intelligence which is the average intelli- 
 gence of the present day. 
 
 It is not possible to remain stationary at 
 any given mental level, and if we content our- 
 selves with doing only what we can do easily, 
 and are satisfied with the knowledge we al- 
 ready possess, we shall find what was once 
 easy gradually becoming difficult, and our 
 
42 
 
 Light for New Times 
 
 small stock of knowledge steadily dwindling, 
 until we arrive at a much lower level than 
 that from which we started. There is no 
 choice between effort and deterioration. It is 
 not a question of abstract intellectual studies 
 merely, though these are as good an exercise 
 for the mind as gymnastics are for the body. 
 Nowadays women are expected to bring a 
 trained intelligence to everything they lay 
 their hands to. Every woman in her capacity 
 of homemaker must have some sound knowl- 
 edge of the laws of sanitation and hygiene, 
 and must be capable of organization and of 
 training others. The days of indulgence to- 
 wards amateurism, and inefficiency in wom- 
 en on the score of their sex, are irrevocably 
 gone. There are naturally branches in every 
 art and craft more suited to women’s special 
 gifts than others, but there is but one com- 
 mon standard of excellence. 
 
 In making efforts to develop yourself you 
 will be rendering a real service to the cause 
 of religion ; and in neglecting to make them, 
 you will be, to the extent of your power, 
 damaging the prestige of the Catholic body 
 in England. And if it should occur to you 
 to share the mistaken piety of the person 
 who asked, “What need has God of human 
 learning?” think of the wise answer, “He 
 has still less need of human ignorance.” 
 
 When I speak of continuing your educa- 
 tion, I am using the word in its deepest sense. 
 
Responsibility 
 
 43 
 
 An educated person has his faculties trained 
 and disciplined; he has an accurate knowl- 
 edge of his own place and significance in the 
 order of things, and he judges of persons and 
 events from an information that extends far 
 beyond the bounds of his own personal ex- 
 perience. An uneducated person is the re- 
 verse of all this. Should you meet someone 
 who appears to act from motives less per- 
 sonal and impulsive than yours, whose sense 
 of honor is more delicate, who is more cour- 
 teous and tactful to strangers, more chari- 
 table to those who differ from him, then you 
 have met a more highly educated person than 
 yourself. 
 
 And I think I can put my finger on a spot 
 where convent-bred girls are apt to be un- 
 educated ; I should like to say were apt to be, 
 but although the phenomenon is rarer, it is 
 still far too frequent. They have, during 
 their school-days, allowed those treacherous 
 emotions and affections to usurp a place en- 
 tirely outside their province; they have al- 
 lowed them to determine their conduct and 
 actions. They worked well, or did right, be- 
 cause they were fond of the nun who taught 
 them, and thought little or nothing of the 
 principle behind, or of the will of Almighty 
 God. In the same way they took a dislike to 
 another nun, and the subject she taught was 
 neglected or ill done : their heart was not in 
 it. All the while they were quite unaware 
 
44 
 
 Light for New Times 
 
 what primitive and instinctive creatures they 
 were allowing themselves to become, and 
 how, instead of aiming at a Christian stan- 
 dard which places woman on an equality 
 with man as a reasonable being, they were 
 really tending towards the Mohammedan 
 ideal that denies her a soul. If unchecked in 
 these tendencies, they would ultimately find 
 their moral peers amongst a tribe of savages. 
 
 And what a difference between the atmos- 
 phere of a class, where these feverish pref- 
 erences, these hysterical fancies and antipa- 
 thies prevail, with their accompanying jeal- 
 ousies and lassitudes, and one filled with girls 
 keenly interested in the subject taught, taking 
 a healthy pleasure in work, and full of the 
 happiness that comes from the right use of 
 faculties. 
 
 What is the result of this enervating mis- 
 use of affections? A girl leaves school and 
 lives near a poor mission, where work which 
 the laity can do cries to be done ; her help is 
 needful in a girls’ club, or sodality, or in 
 the care of a neglected chapel, but she does 
 not like the priest ! All is finished ! no work 
 for our Lord to be got from her ! Or, almost 
 worse, she is not interested in a work or a 
 cause, but she does like the priest or the nun 
 in charge of a sodality. She is always about 
 whether she can be of use or not, and she is 
 not alone ; twenty others experience the same 
 attraction, and are competing with her for 
 
Responsibility 
 
 45 
 
 favor, or notice, or a word of praise, and we 
 have that bad atmosphere of the class-room 
 back again. Such sights make one cover 
 one’s face with shame, that girls should have 
 so little desire to climb to higher things, and 
 do not see the deplorable weakness and folly 
 of such a misuse of God-given faculties. 
 
 All growth entails pain and effort, but rest 
 assured that if you feel there is truth in this 
 description and that it applies to you in anv 
 degree, you are not ready for any real work 
 in the world until you have enthroned reason 
 in its proper place and given your affections 
 that discipline which is the only soil in which 
 they can grow and develop upward. It is all 
 the more important for you to realize that 
 this employment of the affections is a sign of 
 want of education, because modern training 
 has almost stamped it out of public girls’ 
 schools and banished it to the uneducated 
 classes, fairly represented by domestic 
 servants. 
 
 Let us face the truth, the only road to hu- 
 mility, and in doing so we shall at the same 
 time do ourselves justice. The truth is that 
 we are in many ways behind the standard of 
 the day, but it is also true to say that our be- 
 ing so is inevitable. 
 
 When we look back upon history we have 
 to admit that it is surprising that we are as 
 far advanced in education as we are. It rests 
 with the present generation of girls to push 
 
46 Light for New Times 
 
 that advance still further, and to show that 
 those who belong to the Church of Christ are 
 in every way as keen for their own and oth- 
 ers’ progress as their sisters. 
 
 Not so very long ago Catholics in England 
 were forced to live a life quite apart; they 
 could not, even if they had wished it, enter 
 into public life or mix freely in society. 
 Girls were taught by those who had been de- 
 prived of the benefits of a higher education, 
 but who handed on faithfully the traditional 
 arts and crafts of the convent ; they returned 
 to homes where amusements necessarily filled 
 up much of the day. They entered a society, 
 if they belonged to the upper classes, to which 
 their families were intimately bound by ties 
 of faith and relationship — a social circle com- 
 posed of families sharing the same traditions 
 of persecution and privation, and united as 
 only those can be united who have shared a 
 common sorrow. What wonder if their 
 hearts were often more with those of other 
 races, but the same faith, than with their hos- 
 tile fellow-countrymen. 
 
 This isolation, which began in necessity, 
 came to be prolonged from choice or from 
 timidity after the need for it had ceased ; 
 Catholics continued to hold the fort after the 
 enemy had done besieging. Many came to 
 forget that the Church is above all a mis- 
 sionary church with a message to the whole 
 world, and happy in the affections, the inter- 
 
Responsibility 
 
 47 
 
 ests, and the memories of the old circle, 
 counted it more cause for congratulation to 
 have kept one intruder out of their society 
 than to have gained one soul for Christ. Old 
 traditions were carefully preserved, and in 
 their midst rigid and minute class distinc- 
 tions were adhered to long after the broader 
 and more democratic spirit of the age had 
 modified them in general society. 
 
 They slept on a little after it was time to 
 wake — a well-earned sleep, perhaps, on the 
 part of those who had held the fort in time 
 of need ; but what could we say for a genera- 
 tion that should inherit a capacity for repose 
 which they had done nothing to earn ? 
 
 Meanwhile new movements were taking 
 place in England. The spirit of God, which 
 led. so many great recruits into the Catholic 
 Church some sixty years ago, also breathed 
 life into a movement mysterious and puz- 
 zling in its beginnings, but whose inner 
 meaning and ultimate utility to the Catholic 
 cause is beginning to unfold itself — the so- 
 called Anglo-Catholic revival within the 
 Church of England. In no other way could 
 prejudice and hostility to Catholicism have 
 been melted away to the extent which has 
 been the case among the upper classes, and 
 people gradually, almost unconsciously, be 
 led back to accept the greater part of Catholic 
 teaching. In no other way could that wide- 
 spread interest and curiosity about the 
 
48 Light for New Times 
 
 Church have sprung up to which so much of 
 our modern literature and fiction bears wit- 
 ness. 
 
 Contemporaneously with this awakening 
 arose a great philanthropic movement, and a 
 generation grew up deeply stirred by the 
 needs of the poor and the ignorant, whom 
 modern industry had massed into our great 
 cities, deeply convinced of the duty of spend- 
 ing on their behalf their gifts and their ener- 
 gies, and enthusiastic to proclaim : “I am 
 
 my brother’s keeper.” These two move- 
 ments, the religious and the philanthropic, 
 have to a great extent joined hands, and have 
 resulted in a vast network of social and semi- 
 religious activities. 
 
 The part which the laity have played in 
 these activities, in the gift of their leisure, 
 their personal service, their brains and their 
 energies, I say frankly, puts the Catholic 
 laity to shame. 
 
 I would especially call your attention to 
 the amount of solid work that has been done 
 by ordinary girls and women living in the 
 world. And in pointing out this I am not for 
 a moment forgetting the conspicuous sacri- 
 fices and services rendered by many notable 
 Catholics, but the movement outside the 
 Church has greatly owed its strength to the 
 widespread recognition of the responsibility 
 of sharing the social burden, and of each in 
 his obscure corner of the earth doing his ut- 
 
 J 
 
Responsibility 49 
 
 most for the welfare of those less fortunate 
 than himself. 
 
 Almighty God might, of course, act inde- 
 pendently of human aid, but He has chosen 
 otherwise; “the earth He has given to the 
 children of men,” and through the work and 
 co-operation of the children of men His 
 kingdom is to be spread. And here I may 
 remark that I have often heard it urged in 
 excuse for the apathy of our laity that the 
 immense output of non-Catholic energy is 
 due to an inner unrest, a striving to fill a 
 conscious void within, and a weak faith that 
 craves to see immediate results. It is, of 
 course, true that with the peace that comes 
 from a closer union with God than is possible 
 outside the Church the strain and effort to do 
 the work would diminish, and the tone and 
 atmosphere of the work itself would change ; 
 but are we to believe that hearts would cool 
 and grow indifferent to the needs of others ? 
 We should indeed have misread the lives of 
 God’s saints to think this. 
 
 Because God has lavished graces upon you 
 Catholic girls, will He not expect far more 
 from you than from those whom He has al- 
 lowed to remain in their difficulties? Are 
 you to do less for the love of Him you pos- 
 sess than is done by those in the longing and 
 hope of knowing Him ? Wherever there is a 
 chapel neglected, and showing in its shabbi- 
 ness and poverty the want of loving and con- 
 
5° 
 
 Light for New Times 
 
 tinual care, wherever there is a child unin- 
 structed or a cottage unvisited, there is a 
 work for girls to do. 
 
 It is not too much to say that the intelli- 
 gent co-operation of all the laity is needed, 
 according to their gifts and capacities, if the 
 Catholic Church is to take the place that 
 should be hers, as the centre of vigorous life 
 and influence in the nation. 
 
 Nor am I forgetting the great work and 
 devotion of the women in the religious or- 
 ders, but you must remember that that work 
 is to a great extent hidden from the gaze of 
 the outer world ; it is you, the laity in the 
 world, who have to carry the light of Faith 
 for all to see. You are the little cities set 
 upon the hills, and it is very largely by you, 
 and what you are, and what you do. that 
 Catholicism will be judged. A smouldering 
 fire never heats anything red hot, and can you 
 wonder if some Protestant, whose own strug- 
 gles and difficulties have developed in her 
 great energy and zeal, is not greatly stirred 
 at the sight of a Catholic girl who has re- 
 ceived so much without exertion of her own, 
 and yet is content to practise the minimum of 
 devotion permissible ; and counts it no shame 
 to have spent so much time on her dress and 
 her amusements that she has none to give for 
 the poor and needy ? I hope to write more in 
 detail about the practical work that can be 
 done, and the way to set about it, also about 
 
Responsibility 
 
 5i 
 
 professional life and the problems that ac- 
 company it, in other chapters. 
 
 We will now turn our attention to two 
 immediate responsibilities that await every 
 girl, Catholic and non-Catholic alike, upon 
 leaving school, responsibilities that are usu- 
 ally welcomed with open arms : the control 
 of a little money and the choice of clothes. 
 A good deal might be said on both subjects. 
 As regards the spending of money, I will 
 only point out that there is some danger that 
 a convent-bred girl may forget the duty of 
 setting a part of her money aside to be spent 
 upon others, and upon the support of relig- 
 ion. There have, perhaps, been no' collec- 
 tions in the Convent chapel ; everything has 
 been done for her, and she has not been ac- 
 customed to devote a portion of her pocket- 
 money, however small, to some charitable 
 purpose. 
 
 The most practical and safest plan is, after 
 careful thought, to dedicate in your mind a 
 certain portion of your money, however 
 small, for this purpose, and to consider only 
 the remainder as yours to spend as you like. 
 Giving is a habit that needs cultivating, for 
 selfishness and miserliness creep in unawares 
 from very small beginnings, and even the 
 small beginnings contract and tarnish the 
 character. 
 
 Now comes the dress problem. I believe 
 the responsibility laid upon every girl is to 
 
52 
 
 Light for New Times 
 
 make herself look as charming as possible, 
 provided that in so doing she is neither dis- 
 honest nor unkind. 
 
 If the doing of this involves effort and 
 economy or contrivance, so much the better 
 for her. In these days all color and decora- 
 tiveness in dress is left to the women and 
 children, and we have only to remember the 
 appearance of the streets and of social gath- 
 erings, in a time of national mourning, to 
 realize what a depressing effect upon spirits 
 and character would follow if women no 
 longer contributed all the charm and grace 
 to social life within their power. Nor 
 should this, rightly understood, be food for 
 vanity. 
 
 In the souls of most women is implanted a 
 love of the beautiful, of color, of form, and 
 to a few is given an artistic gift of express- 
 ing this in dress. An apparent indifference 
 to appearance, when the kind of life being 
 led does not necessitate great severity or sim- 
 plicity, far from being the sign of superior 
 intelligence, is often the result of dulness of 
 mind and a slovenly disposition. The wearer 
 of this slovenly dress is often full of vanity 
 at what she believes to be her seriousness and 
 superiority to female weaknesses. Does not 
 this seem like an encouragement to all the 
 showy extravagance and want of reticence 
 to be seen in the dress of recent years? 
 
 We shall see that the condition that we are 
 
Responsibility 
 
 53 
 
 to infringe neither honesty nor kindness im- 
 poses many restrictions. 
 
 To be honest, we must never ape the style 
 of dressing of a social class to which we do 
 not belong, or endeavor, by the wretched 
 form of vulgarity that translates every avail- 
 able penny into clothes, irrespective of other 
 claims, to appear to have more money than 
 is really the case. 
 
 To be honest, we must never order what 
 we cannot afford to pay for within a reason- 
 able time. I believe there would be far less 
 of this miserable dishonesty, if the women 
 who practise it could be brought face to face 
 with the suffering and anxiety it entails ulti- 
 mately upon the workers and toilers who pro- 
 duce what they buy : people to whom deferred 
 payment may mean semi-starvation, and 
 who dare not enforce payment for fear of 
 alienating what custom they have. 
 
 A little intelligent inquiry into the work- 
 ings of various trades, and a little sympa- 
 thetic imagination about the lives of others 
 less fortunate than ourselves, will clear the 
 matter up. This would be a good subject for 
 meditation for any girl who is about to man- 
 age a dress allowance for the first time. 
 
 Although it is every girl’s duty to try to 
 have as pleasing an appearance as possible, 
 it is not altogether a simple matter to suc- 
 ceed. Taste requires educating and refin- 
 ing, and bringing into line with Christian 
 
54 
 
 Light for New Times 
 
 thought. The French describe a vulgarly 
 and unsuitably dressed person as “out of her 
 frame.” She is dressed with a view to at- 
 tracting attention to herself, to deceiving 
 the spectator as to her position, or to morti- 
 fying and discomfiting less richly dressed 
 acquaintances — all coarse and egotistical mo- 
 tives, which cause her to violate the real laws 
 of beauty. 
 
 The ideal of beautiful dressing is that it 
 should be appropriate to the age and posi- 
 tion of the wearer, and to the occasion on 
 which it is worn. A dress suitable for driv- 
 ing in a carriage is vulgar when worn to 
 walk in a muddy street; and one intended 
 for an opera or ball would appear extrava- 
 gant at a small party, and the wearer would 
 violate the law of kindness. 
 
 The ideal for a girl should be to make her- 
 self charming while keeping strictly within 
 the limits of her means, and to endeavor, if 
 she has talent and taste, to show kindness by 
 helping others who happen to be less gifted 
 in the art to be charming also. The coarse- 
 fibred and selfish mind, that wishes to attract 
 notice to self and to score a vulgar success, 
 betrays itself in an unwillingness to be help- 
 ful to others, and inevitably in an extrava- 
 gant and advertising appearance. 
 
 Great temptations and real opportunities 
 for heroism revolve around this subject of 
 dress, for it frequently happens that girls 
 
Responsibility 
 
 55 
 
 with very small allowances belong, by reason 
 of their birth, to a set where the standard of 
 dress is beyond what they can well manage, 
 so that they have to accept cheerfully the role 
 of being always the simplest or the shabbiest 
 in the assembly. 
 
 The responsibility laid upon Catholic girls 
 in this matter of dress is to see that their 
 standard of honor and kindness is in no way 
 behind that of the very highest principled 
 non-Catholic, to see that they are not found 
 to be more thoughtless and more careless as 
 to the principles involved in extravagance 
 and display. Also to look well to it that the 
 time and thought given to the subject is not 
 excessive, and does not violate the law of 
 kindness by stealing time that should be 
 given to others, or to cultivating their minds 
 for the benefit of others. Those in high posi- 
 tion cannot too constantly remember how 
 great is the force of example, and that a want 
 of restraint in luxurious dressing on their 
 part may awaken a fire of ambition in the 
 heart of some poor girl, who can satisfy her 
 newly aroused passion only at the cost of 
 mortal sin. 
 
 Another aspect of the dress question is 
 that of modesty. 
 
 Now, within the lines of decency, what 
 strikes the spectator as modest or the reverse 
 in dress is very much a matter of custom. 
 We very soon get so used to what we con- 
 
56 Light for New Times 
 
 tinually see that it produces very little im- 
 pression upon us, one way or another; and 
 we may be shocked at a fashion in a foreign 
 people which to them appears decorous from 
 long use, while our most correct attire may 
 give them an unfavorable opinion of our 
 habits. 
 
 But there is such a thing as a Christian 
 standard of modesty which is common to all 
 professing Christians, whatever their nation- 
 ality. I should define this modesty as the 
 avoidance of the unnecessary display of mere- 
 ly natural and physical beauty. Whatever 
 the natural beauty of the head and face, it is 
 also the seat and mirror of intellectual 
 beauty, in a direct way that can be claimed 
 for no other part of the body. 
 
 No face is evil and degraded by reason of 
 the presence of physical beauty, but by reason 
 of the absence of spiritual and moral beauty. 
 The head and face therefore are always in- 
 tended to be, for human beings, the centre of 
 interest and attraction, and between the re- 
 fined decolletage that bears this object well in 
 view, and the unrefined display which aims 
 merely at attracting admiration to the beauty 
 of any other physical charm, there is all the 
 difference between a Christian and a pagan 
 motive. 
 
 These matters are regulated for most girls 
 by the custom of the society in which they 
 move ; but, unless care be taken, there is room 
 
Responsibility 57 
 
 for the pagan motive to slip in under cover of 
 any fashion. 
 
 Here is a final responsibility to which 
 every girl should give heed. Whether she 
 will or no, she is helping to raise or lower 
 the thoughts concerning women of every 
 man she meets. You Catholic girls should 
 do your utmost to raise the standard of such 
 thoughts very high, for it rests with you to 
 mirror forth in your lives, to a world greatly 
 needing them, some of the graces of Mary 
 Immaculate. 
 
IV 
 
 Professional Life 
 
 Now it is only by labor that thought can be made 
 healthy, and only by thought that labor can be made 
 happy, and the two cannot be separated with impunity. 
 
 — Ruskin. 
 
 A professional, as popularly understood, is 
 one who pursues some kind of calling as a 
 means of livelihood which, while it requires 
 natural aptitudes, also necessitates a more or 
 less elaborate previous training. Similarly, 
 an amateur is a person who, while working 
 upon a subject for the love of it and by the 
 light of his natural gifts, disdains to acquire 
 the thorough training that would give his 
 labors commercial value in the open market. 
 The amateur flourished in days when a social 
 stigma rested upon the earning of money, 
 and when the acquiring of a training usually 
 involved temporary isolation from his social 
 class. He is an all but extinct species to-day, 
 and upon the funeral pyre of his tribe per- 
 ished vanities, futilities, and complacencies 
 untold. 
 
 Women have now entered the world of 
 competitive skill. In some professions they 
 compete side by side with men ; in others, as 
 
Professional Life 
 
 59 
 
 for instance the stage, nursing, and the 
 teaching of girls, they compete with their 
 own sex. These latter occupations have been 
 followed by women from comparatively early 
 times, but it is only of late years that they 
 have been promoted to the rank of profes- 
 sions; and this has come about because 
 women of gentle birth, good education, and 
 trained for their work, have entered these 
 fields of labor. 
 
 The new order of society has been suffi- 
 ciently long in operation to make it possible 
 for us to begin to see what the effects of pro- 
 fessional life are upon feminine nature in 
 general. There are risks and compensations, 
 and we must endeavor to see how far super- 
 natural grace obviates the risks and preserves 
 the womanly nature intact. When we have 
 glanced at this deeper view of the question, 
 we must consider the outlook for girls in the 
 various professions from a practical point of 
 view. 
 
 Roughly speaking, two classes of women 
 enter professions. 
 
 One class consists of those who are com- 
 pelled by force of circumstances to earn a 
 livelihood, and who may have no inclination 
 for the independence and personal effort 
 which the life involves, and possibly no 
 marked abilities. In past times such women 
 usually became private governesses under 
 very unsatisfactory conditions, or, metaphor- 
 
6o 
 
 Light for New Times 
 
 ically speaking, clung round the neck of the 
 nearest male relative, who, if not disposed, 
 was more or less forced by public opinion to 
 support them. Their idleness was harmful 
 to themselves and a burden for others; and 
 ideas have so far changed that nowadays 
 relatives prefer to spend what little money is 
 available upon providing the girl with a 
 training to enable her to support herself, 
 rather than to invest it to enable her to live a 
 life of genteel penury. 
 
 The other class consists of women who 
 have gifts so decided and personalities so 
 marked that they are compelled from within 
 to seek an outlet for their powers. What be- 
 came of them under the old conditions ? They 
 too often furnished society with eccentric 
 characters, and were known, somewhat 
 misleadingly, as “strong-minded women.” 
 Thwarted powers find strange outlets, and 
 many an old lady has attempted to express 
 her contempt for the conventional dulness 
 of her neighbors by defying the fashions and 
 inventing her own code of manners. When 
 women of this latter class have also been 
 among those whom poverty compelled to 
 work, they endeavored to pick up the crumbs 
 of a training in a Bohemian world where 
 women were little respected, and where no 
 provision was made for their legitimate ad- 
 vent. 
 
 Are we to believe that any women enter 
 
Professional Life 
 
 61 
 
 professions as wholeheartedly and with the 
 same stability of purpose as do men ? 
 
 You will remember that I laid it down in 
 the first chapter that every woman of what- 
 ever type owns in her heart, sooner or later, 
 to the conviction that marriage would be the 
 most complete life for her. If this is so, how 
 far does it modify her attitude towards pro- 
 fessional life? 
 
 To different types of women love and mar- 
 riage are foreshadowed very differently, and 
 it is necessary to realize this in order to 
 understand how their outlook on a life of 
 work is colored by these diverse views. 
 
 The women who enter professions by force 
 rather than choice, those who are not natu- 
 rally attracted by independence and work, 
 have pre-eminently a love of home, of affec- 
 tion, and of shelter. They find their happi- 
 ness in the nursery, their recreation in society 
 and support in a certain atmosphere of con- 
 ventionality. They are primarily in love with 
 the married state as such, and are disposed 
 to look gratefully upon any individual man 
 who is kind and agreeable and whose affec- 
 tion will enable them to enter it ; nor are they 
 exacting as to the character of the individual, 
 provided that he falls reasonably into line 
 with the men of their social world. 
 
 The supernatural woman of this type bears 
 a higher impress. She is deeply impressed 
 with the sanctity of the married state, she 
 
62 Light for New Times 
 
 dreams of the privilege of training immortal 
 souls for God and regarding her husband as 
 joint partner in this responsibility; she has 
 with him, in whatever other ways they may 
 lack community of interest, this deep bond of 
 union. Giving first the best and strongest 
 love of her heart to Almighty God, there is 
 an atmosphere of dignity about her that can 
 never be attained by the woman who, know- 
 ing no God, clings with hopeless dependen- 
 cies and impossible exactions upon the love 
 of a creature. It is easy to see that profes- 
 sional life is regarded by such women as these 
 as a kind of exile, or at best a tolerable place 
 of waiting until their dream of married hap- 
 piness is fulfilled, although it would be unfair 
 to assume that this attitude of mind prevents 
 their giving thorough and conscientious at- 
 tention to the work of the present. 
 
 Love and marriage are shadowed forth in 
 the minds of the women of strong individu- 
 ality differently; they dream only of mar- 
 riage as the natural sequel to an overmaster- 
 ing attachment. They demand in the man 
 who inspires this attachment a kindred spirit, 
 intellectual sympathy and harmony of char- 
 acter. They do not enter the married state 
 unless led captive by the conqueror. Con- 
 quest implies previous resistance, and it is a 
 fact that all the intellectual and artistic pow- 
 ers, in the exercise of which a woman has 
 hitherto found happiness, put themselves in 
 
Professional Life 
 
 6 3 
 
 battle array and make a fight for liberty 
 when the conqueror appears, whose ultimate 
 victory they foresee will greatly curtail their 
 liberty. This conflict of powers is a whole- 
 some test of the genuineness of the passion 
 felt. Strong personalities have the gift of 
 inspiring strong attachments, and if it is 
 women of this type whose careers have 
 blotted with crime and stained with tragedy 
 the annals of history, it is also such women 
 who, when sanctified, have become glorious 
 saints, have founded religious orders, and 
 have led lives of heroic devotion in the ser- 
 vice of God. When their vocation has been 
 marriage they have made notable mothers, 
 and it is such who have usually borne sons 
 who have left their mark upon the world’s 
 history. 
 
 Clearly then we may expect the best pro- 
 fessional work from women of this type. It 
 is only from them that we can hope for any- 
 thing approaching really creative work. 
 They throw themselves into' their studies all 
 the more zealously because they realize that 
 the time may be short, and that “love the 
 conqueror” may lurk round any corner, and 
 this thought is a kind of dear dread in their 
 hearts, and while secretly longing for the 
 completion of their womanly nature through 
 love, they also pray for some delay in his 
 coming. 
 
 Let us now consider the action of the 
 
64 Light for New Times 
 
 bread-winning life upon the character of the 
 naturally home-loving woman. For a few 
 years, at any rate, I believe it to be almost 
 wholly beneficial, and this even if we regard 
 her as a merely natural being. We have seen 
 that she has graces and what we understand 
 as womanly qualities, but many failings ac- 
 company these qualities. Such a woman is 
 apt to be weak, unreasonable, unimaginative 
 and narrow-minded, incapable of broad 
 views or the judging of things from an im- 
 personal point of view. I may also add that 
 she is often ignorant of justice and honor as 
 understood in the world beyond the home, 
 which makes her a bad citizen. These failings 
 make an unwise mother and a trying wife. 
 
 It used sometimes to be urged that woman 
 resembled the ivy, and man the oak around 
 which it clung. If the simile were ever true, 
 we have to thank a mistaken education ; and, 
 mark, the ivy eventually destroys the oak, 
 and when there is no oak, lies helplessly upon 
 the ground or clings to the first chance sup- 
 port. There is doubtless a tendency in some 
 women’s nature, once greatly fostered by 
 popular sentiment, which, if unchecked, pro- 
 duces qualities that suggested the simile of 
 the ivy. These qualities were never Chris- 
 tian. 
 
 The “roughing it” which a life of indepen- 
 dence and effort entails has a very bracing 
 effect upon such downward tendencies; the 
 
Professional Life 
 
 65 
 
 mixing with many characters and types of 
 mind enlarges the mental horizon ; the neces- 
 sity for accuracy and honor in business rela- 
 tions deepens the sense of responsibility. 
 After a year or two of such experience a 
 woman is better fitted for marriage, should 
 it come, than before. She is more educated, 
 and the result of all right education is to de- 
 velop a lovelier type of womanhood. 
 
 After many years of professional life, 
 however, if marriage does not come, and if 
 she is a woman without faith and unsup- 
 ported by religion, a deterioration sets in, 
 and she compares unfavorably with her coun- 
 terpart in the married state. Her affections 
 have nothing, or at any rate nothing whole- 
 some, to feed upon; the life is not in itself 
 congenial, she has no personal ambition in 
 her work, no joy in the use of faculties for 
 their own sake; a profound discontent sets in, 
 her character hardens, and she becomes sel- 
 fish and unattractive, and too* often hysteri- 
 cal. In the world we find so* many young 
 people contented in their work, so many joy- 
 less in middle age, so many who seem to* have 
 forgotten how to be happy. 
 
 But if she have faith this will not happen. 
 Her heart has known no period of starvation, 
 but has been steadily nourished and enlarged. 
 She is humble and she loves, and is therefore 
 content with whatever is given her to do and 
 to bear. Loneliness to her is not the utter 
 
66 
 
 Light for New Times 
 
 loneliness that it is to the worldly. She is at 
 peace, and is therefore a centre of peace to 
 those around. There is an atmosphere of 
 motherliness, that most profoundly feminine 
 quality of all, that emanates from her. She 
 has the power of making any place she is in 
 feel like home. You must all have met these 
 qualities in nuns whom you have known. 
 The woman in professional life, whose heart 
 loves where the nun’s heart loves, possesses 
 them, too, and brings them into the school- 
 room, the studio, the hospital, or wherever 
 her work lies. 
 
 And this type of woman is a most valua- 
 ble influence in the rough world of work, and 
 her character has that subtle beauty of bloom 
 which flowers only in a soil of Christian re- 
 nunciation, in a life lived by grace in a state 
 which is contrary to natural inclination. 
 
 To the other type of woman freedom from 
 restraint and congenial work are exhilarat- 
 ing. There is not the same danger here of 
 discontent and repining when the conviction 
 dawns that life is likely to offer little else 
 than work, but there are other possibilities of 
 disaster. If the restraining and refining in- 
 fluence of religion be absent she is likely to 
 become entirely self-reliant, and she is then 
 exposed to a danger to which a man is not. 
 At her present stage of evolution, at any rate, 
 when a woman cuts the traces and launches 
 out into any realm of thought, she is reckless 
 
Professional Life 
 
 67 
 
 to an extent unknown to the masculine intel- 
 lect. Unable, or untrained to take the same 
 broad and balanced view, and less in contact 
 with the accumulative wisdom of experience 
 pervading the masculine world, she rushes 
 heedlessly on in pursuit of some unknown 
 goal. This is probably caused by the same 
 quality in her nature that prompts her to give 
 herself unreservedly and without counting 
 the cost to a person or a cause, and that 
 makes her so almost hopeless to reclaim when 
 she has given herself over to any vice. 
 
 When once a woman has tasted personal 
 freedom, and has also gone intellectually 
 astray, there is little to hold her back from 
 errors in the conduct of life. Her moral 
 courage and recklessness of self quickly 
 bridge the gulf between thought and action. 
 When she has reached this point, should her 
 nature cry out for more affection than her 
 surroundings offer, there is little to restrain 
 her from satisfying this hunger in unlawful 
 ways. 
 
 This I believe to be the dark cloud on the 
 horizon of the future; woman emancipated, 
 independent, and intellectually astray. It is 
 not so large a cloud after all, for th® majority 
 of women-workers profess some religious 
 belief, and there is an encouraging spirit of 
 inquiry manifested by those who have found 
 their self-evolved philosophies fail when put 
 to the test. 
 
68 Light for New Times 
 
 The Catholic woman carries an ideal of 
 womanhood 1 in her heart, and the softening 
 and refining influence of her faith will pre- 
 serve a perpetual springtide in her affections. 
 
 I shall not have written in vain if I can 
 persuade you that whatever other indepen- 
 dence a woman can gain, she can never be 
 independent of affection. This being so, it is 
 common prudence, if it were not also the 
 highest duty, to preserve the heart firmly in 
 the love of God, and also to make the utmost 
 use of all the natural ties and affections that 
 fall to your share. They may be all that life 
 will offer you, but if this should be so, rest 
 assured that, rightly used, they are sufficient. 
 In this respect you can never be as men, 
 though man’s capacity to live an isolated life 
 without deterioration is apt to be over-esti- 
 mated. 
 
 Let us now look at the various openings 
 that are possible for a Catholic girl. There 
 are many occupations, and every year adds to 
 their number, into the pursuit of which the 
 religious difficulty does not enter. 
 
 Experience has pointed to some experi- 
 ments as failures and has confirmed the wis- 
 dom of others; but even when the physical 
 and psychological effects of a calling upon 
 feminine nature have been proved to be satis- 
 factory, it must be remembered that there is 
 still the law of supply and demand to reckon 
 with, and that natural aptitudes and thor- 
 
Professional Life 
 
 69 
 
 ough training in any given direction are use- 
 less unless there is a demand for the capaci- 
 ties you offer. 
 
 The choice of a career must to some extent 
 he determined by whether you have money 
 to spend upon a training or whether you 
 have not, and also whether you will in course 
 of time inherit money or be dependent upon 
 your exertions to the end of your days. 
 Careers such as that of medicine, the higher 
 branches of teaching or the fine arts, are 
 closed doors unless you have money to spend 
 upon a training, which in these cases is both 
 long and expensive. 
 
 At one time teaching was considered the 
 most feasible way for a woman to earn a liv- 
 ing; but let us look at the prospects for a 
 Catholic girl. They are exceedingly poor. 
 For secondary teaching there is practically 
 no opening at all, this branch being exclu- 
 sively in the hands of the religious orders. 
 The very most that might offer, should a girl 
 have especial qualifications, would be, now 
 and again, posts of uncertain tenure in a con- 
 vent school, to fill a gap while a nun was 
 training to take her place. And these posts, 
 when worth having, would probably fall to 
 the lot of convert women who had previously 
 obtained university degrees and were able to 
 introduce the newest educational methods. 
 
 It is obviously not worth while training 
 for posts which do not exist. 
 
70 Light for New Times 
 
 What is the outlook for private gover- 
 nesses ? 
 
 Whenever ideals of education have been 
 low, their lot has been wretched indeed. It 
 is hard to adjust the blame. On the one 
 hand, all kinds of incompetence and in- 
 efficiency have offered themselves at salaries 
 hardly higher than that received by the cook ; 
 and on the other hand, parents have thought 
 so lightly of what is of such vital importance 
 to their children’s welfare, that they have not 
 demanded thorough qualifications, and have 
 not been willing to make sacrifices in order 
 to pay good salaries. They have actually 
 preferred that the governess should be of in- 
 ferior social rank, as the more easily effaced 
 in the house, and relegated to that social 
 limbo inhabited by one between the lady’s 
 maid and the guest. 
 
 Penniless girls who have entered situa- 
 tions of this kind, with poor qualifications 
 and miserable pay, leave them in middle age 
 poorer than they entered. There has never 
 been margin enough from the salary to save, 
 their youth is gone, very possibly their 
 health, and they are often practically friend- 
 less, for their limbo had no other tenant, and 
 permanent friends are made only among so- 
 cial equals. If they have relatives and if they 
 have been filling posts in families much above 
 them in social position, they are too often 
 alienated from them ; for the superficial 
 
Professional Life 
 
 7i 
 
 “gentility” the governess thus acquires is too 
 often a source of mutual friction. It is no- 
 body’s business to follow the after career of 
 the ex-governess, when once she has left the 
 family she has served to the best of her pow- 
 ers ; and although many kind-hearted people 
 do continue to take an interest in her, it re- 
 quires a combination of kind hearts and 
 wealth to make it possible to help her in old 
 age or sickness. Thus often the private gov- 
 erness drifts down to die in the workhouse, 
 or lingers out the end of her days in some 
 charitable home of rest amongst kindred 
 human wreckage. 
 
 This is the last opening which a penniless 
 girl should contemplate, unless she be pos- 
 sessed of so great a gift for teaching and can 
 offer such qualifications as to command a 
 salary of £100 a year or over. The salary 
 must allow of sufficient margin to render it 
 possible to pay regularly into a pension fund, 
 or upon retirement to buy an annuity. Few 
 openings, it is true, offer so much as £100 a 
 year at the start, but it must be remembered 
 that the drawbacks in this case are great. 
 Marriage is the remotest possibility, the iso- 
 lation is great, the teaching life is compara- 
 tively short, and what are brilliant qualifica- 
 tions at the start may be old-fashioned in ten 
 years, and thus the salary will have to de- 
 crease instead of increasing. A few such 
 well-paid posts would offer themselves, both 
 
7 2 
 
 Light for New Times 
 
 at home and upon the Continent and also in 
 India, but it is to be feared that at present 
 these posts are not proportionately numerous 
 among Catholics, who have not as yet come 
 to consider the education of daughters in a 
 serious light ; and it is difficult at present to 
 see how a Catholic girl could acquire the 
 training that would entitle her to claim such 
 a salary ; if she had no money to spend upon 
 training, it is certain that she could not. 
 
 A non-Catholic commanding a salary of 
 £100 to £150 as a private governess would 
 be expected to have taken an Honor School 
 at a University, and to hold in addition a 
 teaching certificate. 
 
 It is not easy to see what would be the 
 counterpart of these qualifications for the 
 Catholic girl, or what would represent any- 
 thing like the same previous study, unless it 
 were, over and above such certificates as 
 were within her reach to gain, a thorough 
 mastery of several foreign languages and 
 perfect familiarity with the manners of the 
 best society. In the world at large the hold- 
 ing of a mere certificate for teaching is ac- 
 counted of very little value, and is regarded 
 as merely a supplement to the sound general 
 training represented by a degree, so that we 
 may reasonably suppose that in a few years 
 Catholics will come to take the same view, 
 and will demand in a high-salaried private 
 governess some very solid attainments. 
 
Professional Life 
 
 73 
 
 With regard to the many private teach- 
 ing posts offered at salaries from £50 and 
 under, these may reasonably be held by girls 
 who will, in the natural course of events, 
 inherit money later on in life, and who mere- 
 ly desire occupation and pocket-money for 
 the present ; but they should be regarded as 
 absolutely closed doors to those entirely de- 
 pendent on their own resources. 
 
 It seems a little hard, for, when all is said 
 and done, many girls and naturally more 
 often the homeless ones, have a lingering 
 preference for a post which, with all its draw- 
 backs, offers them a share, albeit a thin and 
 indefinite one, in a home; and if the home 
 atmosphere is a good one this share is cer- 
 tainly a privilege to be desired. 
 
 The safer way of seeking it is through the 
 door of “companionships.” There is this 
 great advantage about the post of “compan- 
 ion,” that it is almost invariably obtained 
 through private introduction, thus ensuring 
 some kinship of social worlds which at once 
 smoothes many difficulties. The chances of 
 marriage are greater, the share in some so- 
 ciety is certain, and the possibility of forming 
 useful friends follows. The “companion” is 
 not so soon superannuated as the governess, 
 the tie is closer, and the obligation to be- 
 friend her would be considered more bind- 
 ing. Again, the requirements of a compan- 
 ion are such as could be admirably gained in 
 
74 Light for New Times 
 
 a convent school. Courteous and amiable 
 manners, accomplishments, tact, adaptability, 
 good temper, and capability. There are far 
 more posts of this kind than suitable people 
 to fill them, infirmities of temper and char- 
 acter being frequent disqualifications. I need 
 not insist upon the fact that even in these 
 posts some salary must be demanded that 
 will allow of saving. 
 
 There remain a few posts as private secre- 
 taryships, also usually privately obtained and 
 requiring rather higher mental powers than 
 the “companion,” together with the knowl- 
 edge of a foreign language, short-hand and 
 typewriting, as well as a reputation for tact 
 and discretion. A good secretary soon be- 
 comes invaluable, commands a high salary 
 and creditable social standing. There is one 
 opening in the direction of teaching, how- 
 ever, that is distinctly promising even for the 
 Catholic, namely, teaching in elementary 
 schools. There is a movement among non- 
 Catholics to recruit the ranks of such teachers 
 more and more from men and women of the 
 educated classes and of gentle birth. The 
 gain to the taught is obvious. The field of 
 interest for the teacher is vast, provided that 
 her mental outlook be wide enough to grasp 
 the significance of elementary teaching to the 
 life of the nation. 
 
 It is the one teaching profession which at 
 the present time is not overcrowded ; the pre- 
 
Professional Life 
 
 75 
 
 vious training is inexpensive, the hours rea- 
 sonable, the holidays sufficient, and the pay 
 good. Age is no disqualification, so that the 
 teaching life in this department is prolonged. 
 An assistant in London commands a salary 
 from £80 to £115, and a head mistress one 
 from £140 to £300. In the country the pay 
 is rather less. Lastly, the elementary teacher 
 is secure of a pension, and although the pen- 
 sions are at present modest — from £20 to 
 £40 — there is little doubt that they will be 
 soon raised. 
 
 The main drawback for a Catholic girl 
 would be a social one. Catholics are not yet 
 as democratic as their neighbors, and whereas 
 a non-Catholic elementary teacher, well born 
 and well educated, is sure of practical social 
 recognition by her equals, I fear this might 
 not as yet be the case among Catholics. But, 
 after all, this matter, like many others, is best 
 worked by the channel of private introduc- 
 tion, and in this way she could ensure, where- 
 ever she were, some intercourse with the class 
 into which she was born. 
 
 I have considered teaching first, because 
 that seems to me the one profession in which 
 the outlook is quite different for a Catholic 
 from what it is for the world at large. 
 
 We will now think of other more general 
 openings and the advantages they offer. It 
 is an almost impossible task for a girl still at 
 school to inform herself accurately as to 
 
76 Light for New Times 
 
 where these openings lie ; it is nearly as diffi- 
 cult for her relatives, should they be living in 
 out-of-the-way places. The need of a centre 
 of information was so widely felt that some 
 years ago an office was opened in London for 
 the purpose, under the title of “Central Bu- 
 reau for the Employment of Women.”* 
 
 The work this bureau is doing is literally 
 “pioneer work,” and the study of the subject 
 of women’s labor is still in its infancy, but 
 the work that has already been accomplished 
 is great. Any girl writing to or, better still, 
 having an interview with the experienced 
 secretary, and stating in what direction her 
 wishes lie, rvhat her qualifications, or her 
 chances of acquiring them, is certain of ex- 
 cellent practical advice, based on knowledge 
 and wide experience. The secretary is in 
 touch with the varying demands for skilled 
 work in various parts of the country, and 
 long experience enables her to form a very 
 correct opinion as to the personal fitness of 
 the applicant for the work she desires. 
 
 I shall touch only lightly and in a general 
 way upon the advantages of various careers. 
 Special information as to the requisite train- 
 ings and how to obtain them can be obtained 
 at any time from the Central Bureau, when 
 not available from some local source. 
 
 * “Central Bureau for the Employment of Women/' 
 9 Southampton Street, Holborn, W. C. 
 
Professional Life 
 
 77 
 
 One of the most popular careers at the 
 present time is hospital nursing, or the many 
 branches of nursing that demand hospital 
 training. The profession is certainly crowd- 
 ed, but not overcrowded, with the compe- 
 tent; and the demand for nurses is likely to 
 increase rather than diminish, as the many 
 schemes for providing district nurses and en- 
 suring all classes throughout the country 
 careful nursing in sickness develop. 
 
 Good health, a clear head, quick percep- 
 tions, steady nerves and a kind heart form 
 part of the necessary equipment for a nurse. 
 The training is inexpensive — indeed there 
 are still hospitals that require no premium at 
 all — the work varied and interesting, and 
 openings when once the training is completed 
 are numerous and fairly well paid. It must 
 be borne in mind, in considering a nurse’s 
 pay, that her personal expenses are very 
 slight, whether as private nurse or hospital 
 nurse ; her board and lodging are assured, the 
 uniform she wears is very inexpensive, and 
 thus her pay is almost wholly to the good, 
 and allows easily for payment into a pension 
 fund. A movement has begun in America 
 and has already obtained some footing in 
 England, for training and employing ladies 
 as nurses for children. There is little doubt 
 that in a few years this movement will gain 
 ground, when its immense advantages to the 
 child and the home are generally realized. 
 
78 Light for New Times 
 
 There is at present one training ground in 
 London — the Norland Institute. Nurses 
 starting from there command from £36 to 
 £70 a year, and already the Institute is 
 organizing a pension scheme in connection 
 with its students. The training extends over 
 a few months, as compared with the three 
 and four years of that for hospital nursing. 
 This branch would naturally appeal to the 
 more home-loving type of woman. For 
 Catholic girls the openings would necessarily 
 be few, and it is reasonable to suppose that 
 non-Catholics w T ould not often employ Catho- 
 lic nurses. Here, too, we must face the same 
 social obstacle that confronted us with re- 
 gard to elementary teaching. 
 
 Let us now suppose you are an out-of-door 
 loving girl, fond of the country, of the gar- 
 den and of animals, and possessing enough 
 general intelligence to make the study of 
 theory no obstacle to you; then you cannot 
 do better than turn your attention to the 
 Women’s Hostels, established for the study 
 of the lighter branches of agriculture, such 
 as fruit, flower and vegetable gardening, 
 dairy work, fruit-growing, bee-keeping, 
 poultry-farming, etc. Once trained, there 
 are openings as teachers in country technical 
 schools, as assistants or superintendents to 
 private employers ; or should you have enter- 
 prise and a business head, there is the possi- 
 bility of opening in some part of the country 
 
Professional Life 
 
 79 
 
 on your own account. I need not point out 
 that as the training lasts for two or three 
 years, this career is not open to the penniless. 
 
 Another branch of work for the out-door- 
 loving girl is sanitary inspection. This needs 
 a certain amount of brains, since some study 
 of physics and chemistry, of building con- 
 struction, and elementary statistical methods, 
 is necessary. The training, however, lasts 
 six months only and costs not more than £12. 
 The actual work involves the inspection of 
 tenements, workshops, factories, etc.; it is 
 perhaps monotonous, but regular and well 
 paid. It must be remembered, however, that 
 not every one holding a certificate is certain 
 of securing a post. 
 
 I daresay all the openings that we have 
 been discussing may appear to you a little 
 dreary, and secured only at the expense of 
 much previous labor, and your thoughts may 
 be turning in two directions that appear in a 
 golden light, and that apparently can be en- 
 tered without any preparation : literature and 
 the stage. 
 
 Now as regards literature, if by that term 
 you understand the writing for small maga- 
 zines and periodicals, I will not deny that 
 much success and very satisfactory incomes 
 are often won even by comparative begin- 
 ners, provided that they have a natural gift 
 for constructing a story and can write their 
 mother tongue correctly. I will not dogma- 
 
- 8o Light for New Times 
 
 tize, but I should advise that this door be 
 tried only by those who can either afford to 
 wait indefinitely for success, or who can pro- 
 duce attempts in fiction in the leisure of some 
 regular working life. A little private influ- 
 ence and the interest of anyone in practical 
 touch with this class of work is almost essen- 
 tial if time is not to be thrown away. 
 
 How t about the stage ? Given youth, per- 
 sonal attractions, a little intelligence, and the 
 door swings open magically, just far enough 
 for you to get one foot on — to walk on as a 
 silent member of some troupe, in a dress sup- 
 plied by the management, at a salary under 
 £i a week. But what then? There is no 
 dramatic college in England; there is no 
 training obtainable, other than what can be 
 picked up as a spectator, supplemented by 
 possibly some lessons in elocution, dancing, 
 and fencing. Hundreds would compete with 
 you for the chance of a part with a few words 
 to say; hundreds would be waiting to take 
 advantage of your first blunder. The higher 
 you rise in the scale, the fewer the prizes, the 
 keener the competition. It is an exceedingly 
 arduous life, full of hardships and of bitter 
 disappointments, and, without private influ- 
 ence, an almost hopeless one for all but those 
 of very remarkable gifts. It must frankly be 
 owned, too, that for a girl, unfamiliar with 
 the atmosphere of the theatrical world from 
 early association, and unprotected by rela- 
 
Professional Life 
 
 81 
 
 tives or old friends in the profession, the life 
 is an exceedingly dangerous one. 
 
 We now come to a career that requires a 
 long and expensive training — that of medi- 
 cine. No girl would contemplate this career 
 who had not an exceedingly strong inclina- 
 tion for it, intellectual abilities and a certain 
 amount of money to fall back upon. The 
 prizes are not numerous, and the making of a 
 private practice by a woman doctor is very 
 up-hill work. 
 
 There is still a great amount of prejudice 
 to be lived down in this country. Also it may 
 be questioned whether women have as yet 
 shown themselves eminently qualified for sur- 
 gery or the highest branches of the profession 
 of medicine. 
 
 What of the fine arts ? A girl can hardly 
 be said to choose an artistic career; she is 
 chosen for it by her gifts and her tempera- 
 ment, and this because the possession of the 
 very qualities that make for success as an 
 artist usually unfit her for success in other 
 work. 
 
 The training for the highest branches is 
 long, very long — six or seven years at least. 
 It is not actually expensive, but the six or 
 seven years must be regarded as years of 
 spending merely. As a means of livelihood 
 painting is precarious even for the skilled. 
 Thousands of pictures, the painting of which 
 has entailed great expense, and which have 
 
82 
 
 Light for New Times 
 
 secured good places on the walls of an exhibi- 
 tion, remain unsold every year. Every artist 
 knows what it is to have a little run of luck 
 and then long periods of disappointment at 
 some time or other in his career. 
 
 It must be admitted that the life of an art 
 student is probably as delightful a one as can 
 be found, and the hours spent in creative 
 work are hours of pure enjoyment. An artist 
 is therefore more easily reconciled to poverty 
 than one whose interests are more bound up 
 with the possession of worldly goods. But 
 even the most light-hearted artist cannot live 
 upon air; and if a girl is quite without pri- 
 vate means she cannot hope for a career as an 
 exhibitor merely, or even for the happiness 
 of giving full play to her creative gifts in 
 congenial lines, a certain amount of capital 
 being necessary for the production of any 
 serious picture. 
 
 Physical strength and health are so essen- 
 tial for the production of strong work that 
 privations, however willingly endured, soon 
 defeat their own end. There is luckily ample 
 work for the competent in more modest 
 branches — in the illustrating of books and 
 periodicals, or in designing, and doing prac- 
 tical work in the many branches of the ap- 
 plied arts. Firms of decorators frequently 
 employ women. There are numerous posts 
 for teachers in connection with technical and 
 secondary schools. Much is also to be done 
 
Professional Life 
 
 83 
 
 by an artist with the gift of teaching in the 
 way of opening art classes in parts of the 
 country remote from any existing art teach- 
 ing centre. No girl with a real creative gift, 
 with initiative and with energy, need ever be 
 at a loss to find an opening for her powers, 
 provided — and this applies to every branch 
 of the arts — she is thoroughly trained. Great 
 natural gifts may give the untrained a start 
 for a few years, but inevitably the trained 
 will tread upon their heels and finally push 
 them aside. 
 
 You Catholic girls find all these doors 
 ready opened for you; it is for you only to 
 choose whether you will enter or no. If you 
 enter, do not withhold thoughts of gratitude 
 for those who forced them open. It was the 
 will of God in past centuries that Catholic 
 women should be hidden in the faith, pre- 
 serving the spirit of worship and prayer 
 within convent walls and within the home. 
 It was also His will that other women should 
 undertake a heavy task, no less than the forg- 
 ing of another link in the chain of human 
 progress. The lives of the women who la- 
 bored to this end, amidst a storm of opposi- 
 tion, of contempt, and of slander, remain for 
 the most part as yet unwritten. 
 
 Those of us who saw something of even 
 the latter end of the struggle know the acute 
 moral suffering they were called upon to en- 
 dure, which you of to-day can hardly guess 
 
84 Light for New Times 
 
 at. They suffered gladly for a cause in which 
 they had faith, and they were women of sin- 
 cere and earnest purpose. 
 
 May we not dream of a time when Catho- 
 lic women, entering into the heritage thus 
 won and mingling with the intellectual chil- 
 dren of those who fought for it, shall bring 
 to them the priceless knowledge of the true 
 faith? May not the blending of these two 
 spirits make women yet more truly children 
 of Mary, who is Rosa Mystica, but also Sedes 
 Sapientiae ? 
 
 PRINTED BY BENZIGER BROTHERS, NEW YORK. 
 
Standard Catholic Books 
 
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