industry."

You may rest assured that if you set your mind on a career of splendid
usefulness for your fellows (and I hope every one of you here aims at
this), then you will need all the training that the highest and most
prolonged education can give you. Become the most perfect creature you
have it in your power to become. If Oxford or Cambridge are open to
you, welcome the opportunity, and use the extra power they will give
you. If not, then utilise the years that lie before you, in perfecting
your accomplishments, in self-education; in interesting and informing
yourself on social questions, in enlarging your horizon, while you
cheerfully, happily, brilliantly perform _all_ your home duties.

And during this period of preparation which you all must go through,
remember that there are some things which you can do better in your
inexperience and ignorance than any other people. How is this? Tell me
why it would be more comfort, and do more good sometimes to a poor sick
woman to bring her a few primroses or daffodils than to give her any
substantial relief. The reason is the same. The very freshness and
innocence of young faces, that sympathise without having the faintest
suspicion of the sin and misery of the world, is more refreshing and
helpful than the stronger sympathy of one who really knows all the evil.
You can be primroses and daffodils, and give glimpses into a purer
world of love and gentleness and peace.

And if a prolonged training is impossible to you, it is often possible
for you to assist in some humble capacity some lady who is so engaged in
work on a scale which you could not yourself touch. Be her handmaid and
fag and slave, and so gradually train yourself to become capable of
independent action.

But to sum up all I am saying it amounts to this--Where there's a will
there's a way, and I want you to have the will.

Did you ever think for what reason you should have had such a splendid
time of it in your lives? Not two girls in a thousand are getting such
an education as you are, such varied studies, such vigorous public
school life, such historic associations. And why? Because you are better
than others? I think not. It is that you play your part in the great
social organism our national life; hundreds are toiling for us, digging,
spinning, weaving, mining, building, navigating, that we may have
leisure for the thought, the love, the wisdom that shall lighten and
direct their lives. You cannot di