history that other regiments could boast, and he would be glad and proud of the fact that there were so many fine ones.  All good schools belong to a splendid brotherhood—­a grand army—­and they should be proud of each other.  We can be just as true and loyal to our own, and yet have wide feelings. Esprit de corps—­loyalty to our body—­is a very splendid thing, and we degrade it when we turn it into mere clannishness; it ought to bring out our love for all that is good, just as love for home ought to make us love outsiders better.

I have spoken of the faults of esprit de corps—­do not think that means I do not value it.  No; a thousand times, no!  If we had no esprit de corps we should not be a living body, but a dead, stagnant mass, only fit to be swept away.  What is true esprit de corps?  My idea of it is, being content to sink all personal interests—­being content to be as he that doth serve—­being glad and proud to fill the smallest post, if so be that, by filling that post in the most perfect 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.