the pleasures of the home--pleasures and opportunities which no
institutional life can give.




XI

FROM THE SCHOOL TO THE GIRL


What the school is able to do for the girl depends very largely upon the
girl herself. The majority of people with whom she comes in contact do
not take that into consideration, and the school is held unfairly
responsible for the girl. All any school can do is to use the material
it finds. Some one has said, with harsh but true emphasis, that a
college does not make a fool, it simply helps in the development of one.
As an illustration of its limitations, a school sends out two girls from
the same class; one girl it is proud to have taken as a type, the other
it is sorry to have represent it. Yet both have been under exactly the
same influence. Students do not realize how fearfully at their mercy a
school is, or that, so far as reputation is concerned, it is they who
make or mar its credit.

If the school training is worth anything at all, it makes the most of
unpromising material. Its really discouraging experience is not with the
girl of limited ability who gives her best and so in some sense gets the
best, but with the student who doesn't give her best and who, because of
her own indifference, is always misrepresenting the training she is
receiving. No school ever wishes to have its ideals confused by a vulgar