I sometimes think this reaching out after the
unattainable is worse for a girl than passive indifference to what
she might acquire. A large part of the success a person achieves is
dependent upon her thinking her calling the very best in the world.
It is not the work which dignifies you: it is you who dignify the work.
The girl who wins honor in medicine, in literature, in music, in
engineering, in astronomy, in laundry-work, in cookery, in needle-work,
ennobles literature, or music, or science, or housekeeping. What worthy
pursuit can you not, by excellence, raise into honor and esteem? Matilda
of Normandy embroidered, in the quiet of her castle, stitch by stitch,
and day after day, the battle of Hastings, at which the Conqueror won.
When that great mingling of Normans and Saxons proved to be the
important and the last step in the making of England, men looked back
to the battle which decided the Norman Conquest, and, lacking needed
information from chronicles, turned to the work of Matilda. There,
on the Bayeux tapestry, was wrought the battle scene they required,--a
piece of woman's work. It was a peasant girl, you know, who brought
victory to France in the Hundred Years' War between that country and
England.
Girls and boys have too slight an appreciation of manual labor. In
most ways, work with the hands is more necessary than mental labor.
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