way, you can help on the
perfection of the school to which you belong. I was talking to some one
the other day about the community to which she belongs, and where she
holds a leading place. "Of course, I would black the shoes," said she, "if
it would help the work in the very least, and so would any one who was
worth their salt." I quite agree with her, and I would not give much for
any work in which that was not the feeling of the workers, from the
highest to the lowest: that is the only true _esprit de corps_.

Some say women are incapable of such a masculine virtue--that women cannot
put their private feelings in their pocket and act in subordination to the
good of the whole--that they cannot sink their self-importance and their
petty jealousies--that they cannot suppress themselves for a cause.
Schools like ours have done a great deal for the mental education of
women. I think they will do something more valuable still if they show
that through their public education women can learn true public spirit,
that school teaches true _esprit de corps_--that it teaches them to seek
the beauty of being second, instead of the glory of being first.

In acting or recitations, could you be glad to take a minor part to help
on the whole, or would you be huffy and cross-grained because your powers
were not brought to the front? In the Wagner music at Baireuth, the
singers take the good parts in turn, and the best prima donna, as Kundry
in "Parzival," in one whole act has only one word. Think of the
self-suppression needed for one who has such talent, to be content to act
in such a piece and to put her full power into the dumb by-play, which is
all that she has to do.

_Esprit de corps_ is _the_ virtue above all others which we, as members of
this school, should seek to attain, and, in the very nature of things,
nothing so entirely kills it as any self-seeking; while if you wish to be
worth anything as an individual, remember that nothing is so smallening,
so alien to any true greatness--to the most far-off touch of greatness--as
the wish to be Number One.

_Esprit de corps_, to my mind, means that we all stand shoulder to
shoulder, loving our school, helping each other; doing our duty in home
and school, and in after-life, more perfectly, because we are proud of our
school and mean to be worthy members, so far as in us lies; helping others
because "our advantages are trusts for the good of others." Remember our
school motto, "