people are so often guilty. We ought to love our own school, or hall, or
college; but it is a poor, low kind of love if it means despising other
schools, or halls, or colleges, picking holes in them, refusing to learn
from them, and being mere partisans. A soldier would be proud of his own
regiment, and think it the finest there was, but he would admire the
splendid 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