Helen M. Winslow

“ We are in danger, in our eagerness to be of service and our dread of losing some of the frills of life, [26] of forgetting that we can do no better service to humanity than to develop our own selves into the highest types of womanhood. The world will always stand in need of noble women.
The great trouble with the average woman is that she does not readily find her balance. Who does not recall some rare, sweet nature that while bearing the burdens of life—heavy burdens, perhaps—is marked by a serenity of soul that is as restful to her friends as it is helpful to herself? ”

“ The dreary time of disillusionment comes and the cutting contrast between the real and the ideal makes itself painfully felt. Friends die, hopes are shattered, the inexorable facts of life force themselves upon us and we awake from the golden dreams of early life. The more delicately organized a woman is the deeper the springs of truth in her lie, and the more is it a necessity of her nature that, when the spell is broken, she shall stand face to face with the inner meaning of life, that she shall search and find herself. ”

“ It rests with the individual woman whether she will be like a rose tree full of brightness and fragrance, a help and an inspiration; or whether she will waste herself in a mad endeavor to keep up with the pell-mell, hop, skip and jump of modern life. Shall we stop occasionally long enough to plant the seed germs that will blossom later into flower and fruit? Or shall we degenerate into mere replicas of other women who wear good clothes, do and say the conventional, commonplace thing, and are as uninteresting as a sunset without a flush of color? ”

“ Cultivate sunshine and sweetness in ourselves at home, every day and every hour in the day, and we shall have no difficulty in keeping sweet and pleasant everywhere else. Let us each be the woman for whose presence her friends wait as for a benediction of peace.
Do you not know women whose very presence is uplifting, whose very atmosphere is peace? We might all be so if we would set ourselves steadily and calmly to work to find our balance and lift ourselves to a mental plane where outside worries and flurries and tempers and jealousies could not reach us. ”

“ If girls could be left to themselves as boys are, and allowed to know from childhood the blessed privilege of unconscious self-companionship, and the solitary communion of earth and air and sky, would not the other side of their natures be developed? Would not they learn to form their own opinions, and hold independent ideas, just as naturally as boys? To those occasional seasons when a woman seems to have lost her hold on life is owing some of the most helpful work ever given to the world. ”

“ There is such a great and splendid work for the women’s clubs to do that the earnest, noble, unselfish woman becomes absorbed in something beyond self-seeking. She ceases to care whether her name stands first on the list of committees, or, indeed, whether it is there at all. She ceases to mind if she is left off the list of after-dinner speakers at the annual banquet. She ceases to suffer an envious pang because her enemy is asked to write the club poem, for the simple reason that she has ceased to be conscious of an enemy. ”

“ Happiness is more a habit of the mind than anything else. If we keep ourselves in that mental frame, admitting nothing but the sunlight of existence, sunshine will become such a habit with us that we can no more help shedding sunlight around us than we can help breathing. Isn’t that worth while? And the club, where we come to meet our sisters who have the same kind of trials and difficulties as we do, is one of the places where we should not only seek to gather up sunshine, but to scatter it. For we cannot reap what we do not sow, nor reflect what is not in the soul. ”

“ And now that we have stepped forth and won places as physicians and lawyers and ministers, now that we are widening the ranks of every profession as we go forth on the road to higher achievement, it behooves every woman-soul of us to ask ourselves—What have I to do about it? Am I doing my duty to the rest of mankind? Am I bearing my share of the burden of the world? Or, if this last is denied me, am I possessing my soul in patience and living up to the splendid present? Am I sweet and gentle and strong and helpful? Am I critical of no one but myself? ”

“ It is easy to make good cheer for others by keeping it first in our own hearts. The selfish inlooking soul is never happy; the broad-visioned worker for humanity may always be so. Which shall we choose?
Let us look out and not in; let us forget the annoyances of life and recognize only the kindness and nobleness of humanity; let us give generously of ourselves, seeking nothing in return.
We worry too much about what somebody has said or may say against us. Some petty criticism which should be beneath our notice keeps many a woman tossing on a restless pillow half the night. ”

“ The limitations of other women are no personal concern of ours. It is ours to do for others, to lose our own pettiness and enlarge our own horizon by giving loyal, loving service, and this includes a broad, universal love to all women, to the world around us—a world, whoever and whatever we are, that always needs us. It may be the world of home, it may be the public schoolroom, it may be the ranks of fashionable society, or it may be the small circle of the small country town, but our love and our service are needed. ”

“ It is impossible for us henceforth to settle back into selfish living—that is, if we are developing the highest privileges that come to the modern woman. We shall possess our souls in patience and find our balance in a serenity of spirit that will give us a clearer vision and freedom from worry. We may still feel that we are personally responsible for a great deal in the world around us, but we shall not worry and fret over it, and we shall learn the secret of combining earnest, constant endeavor with a sublime unconsciousness to the pin-pricks of existence. ”

“ To the woman who would be individual, who wants to be an inspiration and a beneficence, there is but one message: Be not afraid of yourself; get acquainted with the deeps of your own nature; face the shortcomings of your own spirit. Go into the open country alone if you can; if not, take a little time out of every twenty-four hours to think. Just as the observance of the Sabbath is a wise thing from a physiological standpoint, so are self-communion and its breathing spaces a blessing to the individual. ”

“ Sometimes we refuse to recognize those friends who take all and give nothing, until they have absorbed everything and we are left like a dry sponge to realize their unfaithfulness. But it is through such lessons that we come to know the chaff from the wheat and to realize the need of an inner strength which shall enable us to stand upon our own feet. Hence it is that even friends who know each other through and through, and who are congenial down to the very lightest mood, ought still to shun a life that will bring them into too close relationship and prevent their individual development. ”

“ When a gossip brings a tale about some friend, there is no rebuke so keenly felt as a dignified and sober silence. When such a story is brought and you ask some question, or even seem to acquiesce, you are pretty sure to be reported as having told the story. We all have days, too, which seem to be filled with petty trials and miserable crosses. The woman at home as well as the man in business has to bear these until every nerve seems bare. Small things assume huge proportions, and life seems almost unendurable. ”

“ But we must not let our sense of individual responsibility for the general welfare become too keen. When we consider the multiplication of societies almost daily for the amelioration of every possible wrong and the furtherance of nearly every possible good, we seem in some danger of such a result. Not only the average woman, but the exceptional one, is infected by the universal desire to improve the world in general and mankind in particular; and, figuratively, she seems to be going forth morning, noon and night seeking for new evils to conquer. ”

“ We are in need of city mothers as well as city fathers; not until the mother-care has reached out into all departments of municipal life and the incentive to good has become as powerful as the incentive to evil; not until the beautiful and the true are clothed in forms as attractive as the vile and false; not until nobleness and purity of character are requisites demanded of those who fill high public positions—not until then will women cease to have opportunity for efficient, practical effort; not until then will women cease to have a share of public responsibility. ”

“ How can we show that in our manner which we lack in our natures? And how can we possess repose of the soul when we never allow ourselves a minute to catch up with ourselves, to commune with the silent forces of nature, to inhale the strength and calmness and courage that we might exhale again in the fragrance which we call, in the rare instances when we behold it in others, repose of manner? Life for the most of us is an insane scramble to catch up with things—and not half the time do we know or care whether they are things worth catching up with ”

“ It was the conscience of the American woman which was the one invulnerable, irresistible, unsilenced enemy of American slavery. That conscience of woman is the tower which society will always need to have developed and regnant within it, and there is no other office so great.
Sympathy in woman comes nearest to the heart of Christ—sympathy for the erring, the sick and suffering. That is one power which she needs to contribute to society. ”

“ I call it living on a plane where the mire of petty smallness, the hurt of wrong living and the danger of wrong thinking cannot reach us.
But, after all, why should we dread growing old? It seems to me that life should be brightest, like the sunset, just before the night—if it is night. I prefer to think of it as the real morning. When we have learned to drop worry and undue haste, and fretfulness and all disagreeableness, we are only just fitted to enjoy the serenity of age. ”

“ A pleasant face carries joy and sheds sunshine. A worried, harassed countenance may make a [99] whole roomful miserable. Every happy thought lends a pleasant line to the face, and there is no excuse for looking otherwise. All girls are more or less pretty at twenty; but it has been her own fault if the woman of fifty has not the best kind of beauty—that indefinable sweetness of graciousness that reflects itself in every feature of the face. Happiness is ours if we will but reach out for our small share and make the most of it. ”

“ Above all, dear ladies, let us not make our lives vain, vainglorious and in vain, by fancying that all busyness is business; by hugging a merely cluttered existence with ecstatic and debilitating self-consciousness, which is one of the deadliest banes to be guarded against as long as ‘woman’s work,’ [183] ‘woman’s mission,’ ‘woman’s institutions’ and the ‘woman question’ agitate the air. Let us strive for more of that poise which experience and a stable nervous organization has given men; let us remember that there are absolutely no safeguards against fussing and worry ”

“ And is there not a way by which this serenity of soul, this illumination, may become a characteristic of every good woman?
The more we are in ourselves the more we can do, the more we shall desire to do for others. There is nothing greater in life, nothing greater in Christianity than this great principle of helpfulness and service and love for others. It is the kingdom of heaven to which we all aspire some time or other, only we do not always realize that it is here and now if we will have it so. ”

“ It is only by putting our lives in harmony with the great principle of service to our fellow-men that we shall find them. It is of little use to strive to attain popularity, greatness, power over others; it is of infinite use to find out how we can be of service to those with whom we are associated, and then to forget ourselves in such service. Kindliness, helpfulness, service: these three were never more needed than now. The great-hearted, sympathetic, charitable-minded, brave woman is needed everywhere. She it is who is beloved, who makes for peace and righteousness ”