ly
accomplished her purpose and enchanted the world with her singing. She
was happy. Of course everybody expected her to be. But I have known
another girl, equally happy, carefully working in the laboratory to find
the water-tubes of a star-fish or the nerves of a clam. This girl said
to me with a face bright with enthusiasm, "When I first began to work
with Professor ---- in the laboratory it was as if I had been traveling
all my life in a desert land, and had suddenly come upon fountains of
fresh water." She was as poor and obscure as my singer was rich and
famous, but she was using her powers and was happy.

Of course the kind of happiness to be found even in secondary success
depends on the great aim of any life. In some cases it almost seems as
if the minor aim were the only one. The happiness it brings cannot go
very high, yet so far as a looker-on may judge it feels like happiness.
But most people--perhaps all, if we only knew it--do acknowledge the
grand aim in life, even though they make very little effort to reach
it. When they consciously neglect this for the minor aim, they are
uneasy and not thoroughly happy; but when the minor aim is good in
itself and is always made subservient to the higher, success there does
prove a well-spring of delight.

Spencer's remark is also true in the best sense, for no powers crave
exercise so much as the higher powers. If my singer had done a sinful
deed no applause could have made her happy. And, on a lower plane, if
she had lost the husband she dearly loved, even her art would not have
satisfied her.

It may seem as if I am choosing all my illustrations from among people
who have special gifts, and that nothing I say applies to the great army
of girls who will never be distinguished, and who are all the dearer for
not wishing to be so. I have not forgotten this, but I began with
striking illustrations because they are easiest to understand.

The grand aim of life should be the same for all, whether gifted or not.
But the particular aim must vary with the individual. Probably with five
girls out of ten the particular aim is to have a happy home. Once we
might have said nine girls out of ten, but the present tendency of
thought is to make girls ambitious,--too ambitious, it sometimes seems,
for the very best of life.

Of course selfishness shows itself in various ways, and the girl who
wishes to have a happy home without thinking how she shall make a happy
home may b