GIRLS' HIGH SCHOOL.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18157, 31 January 1921, Page 2

GIRLS' HIGH SCHOOL.

JUBILEE CELEBRATIONS

SERVICE AT KNOX CHURCH.

The jubilee celebrations of the Otago Girls’ High School commenced yesterday with a service at Knox Ohurch. It had been arranged that all those participating should meet at the school and proceed to the church in procession, but the weather proved very unpropitious, and in consequence quite a number were content to go straight to the church. This, however, did not by any means apply to all, quite 300 ex-pupils, including visitors from all over the dominion, assembling at the school despite the pouring rain, at 2 o’clock. A number of interested spectators, including several of the male sex*. hung about the entrance watching the arrivals, all heavily cloaked and armed with umbrellas. The Fates were more kindly disposed than they seemed, as shortly before half-past 2 the shower ceased. The bell sounded for the fall-in, and a little later Miss F. M. Allan, with Mrs K. S. Allan, Mrs Gillies, Miss M. Cairns, Miss Glasgow, and Mias Mollison, led the way through the gates, and proceeded towards Stuart street, followed by the ex-pupils, with about 100 of the present girls bringing up the rear. Most of the present pupils are still out of town, not having returned from the vacation, and it speaks well for the interest of the girls in the jubilee that so many were present. Passing down Stuart street, the procession turned into George street, and wended its way along the footpath on the western' side' till the church was reached. No doubt much of the conversation turned on past days, but the main question was whether the wintry conditions are going to continue, or whether there will be an improvement, much of the success of the various arrangements necessarily depending upon the weather that prevails. The service was conducted by the Rev. Tulloeh Yuille, with whom were associated Dean Fitchett aa preacher, Dr Cameron (Chancellor of the Otago University), and the Hon. G. M. Thomson. After the singing of the doxology (“Praise God from Whom All Blessings Flow”). Mr Yuille welcomed the congregation, among whom were many who have played a prominent part in education in Dunedin and throughout the dominion. Mr Yuille said: “In God’s name, I bid yon welcome to His house of prayer. - Let jubilee of thanks and praise to Almighty God resound through all your fellowship this week; raise up vour Ebcnezer and say: ‘ Hitherto hath the Lord helped me.* * Give unto the Lord , the glory due to His name.’ ‘Worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness.’ ‘O magnify the Lord with, me, and let us exalt His name together.’ ” Mr Thomson read the lesson, which was from the eighth dhapter of the Book of Deutpronomy and Dr Cameron led in prayer. The first hymns were “O Lord of Bethel, “Mv God I Thank Thee” and “Through the Night of Doubt and Sorrow.” After the sermon Mrs R. J. MToren (nee Come Aslin) sang “O Divine Redeemer,' a prayer followed by Mr Yuille, and the hymn “O Love that Wilt Not Let Me Go was sung. Mr Paget Gale followed with the “Hallelujah Chorus” on the organ, and then came the Benediction and Sanctus. The opening voluntary was “Chanson do joie ” ” (Hading) and the closing one “Triumphal Song” (Brewer). Doan Fitchett spoke as follows: The honour of addressing you on this histone occasion, the jubilee of the Otago Girls’ High School,. comes to.me because of my association with the school as one ,of its managers during a series of years in the far past. The school of to-day will be better known to you than it is to. me. Any one of my ministerial brethren might speak to you acceptably about the education of women, telling you, perhaps, as our custom is, things you know already. My qualification for this jubilee function is an intimate knowledge of the school in days gone by. Somewhere back in the 'eighties I was appointed to the Board of Governors of the Otago Boys’ and Girls’ High Schools. Mr Alexander Wilson was then rector ot the Girls’ School, with Mr G. M. Thomson—now the Hon. G. M. Thomson—as one of his lieutenants, and Dr Bulau aa another. At the Boys’ School the Rev. Dr Belcher, newly appointed from England,' ,J was about to take charge. The "governing”,of the Board of Governors stopped short ; pf meddling with the work of the schools. It provided for the work of the schools by appointing the best teachers it could find, paying them the best salaries the funds could afford, and then leaving them very much to themselves. The funds came partly from school fees the “ free place ” system had not yet come in—and partly from endowments. Large blocks of land, some north of Dunedin, some south, had been set apart for the support of the high schools by the one-time Otago Provincial Council; in which matter the Otago Provincial Council followed a good precedent. The founders of Otago, nostly members of the Free Church of Scotland, in their Articles of Settlement drawn in Edinburgh, provided that one-eighth of the produce! of land sales should be given to the Presbyterian Church of Otago for “religious and educational uses.” Thus endowed, iihe Presbyterian Church has been able to establish and maintain three chairs in the Otago University—a chair of English, a chair of Mental fkrience, a chair • of Natural Philosophy. Professor Seeley, in his “ Expansion of England,” suggests that the British people conquered and peopled half the world in a fit o f absence of mind. Certain it is that providing for religion and education in the vast territories they acquired was not in their mind. In Otago that honour belongs to the founders of the settlement: so also in the neighbouring settlement of Canterbury—the founders provided endowments for religion and education. They were men who saw, as wo see, that these two things go together, that there can be no true education without religion, and that both are essential to the health and wealth of the State. In the early time there were always ministers of religion on the High Schools Board of Governors, as there are still on tlie Council of the University. The other members were business men and men who knew about the land. I recall Mr James Fulton, of the Taieri; Mr Clark, a Scottish farmer, experienced and shrewd; Mr W. H. Reynolds; Mr Thomas Dick; and, later, Mr George Gray Russell, Mr J. R. Sinclair, now Sir John Sinclair; Mr James Allen, now Sir James Allen and H'gh Commissioner; and Mr J. F. M. Fraser. Professor Shand was our treasurer, Mr Colin Macandrew secretary, and the Rev. Dr Stuart chairman. Dr Stuart, although I knew him well in other relations, always seemed to me somewhat awe-inspiring aa chairman of the board. He exacted order, he expected seriousness. Once, to a member of the board who began to roll tobacco tor a cigarette f he addressed a stem rebuke:—At P ark amentary committees, directors’ meetings, and the like let men smoke if they pleased; but there could bo no smoking at the High Schools Board. Seated at the head of the table, solemn of aspect not to say grim, he handled the business with firmness, and despatched it with celerity; a wedding or a funeral might be awaiting him elsewhere. He had many engagements of that nature. But what need within these walls to portray Dr Stuart? If you ask for his monument, look around you. Better than in the bronze effigy sitting by the railway and the wharves, his true memorial is to be seen in this Knox Chureh, which he built, in the University of winch h© was the chancellor in the High Schools of which he was the' presiding genius. There was no good work of the time but Dr Stuart had a hand L it, and Dunedin to-day is hardly aware ot how much it owes to his pubLio spirit and his zeal for the best things—the things that make for the healthy life 0 f a young community. On Dr Stuart’s death I hZ came chairman of the board, but I do not claim that his mantle descended upon mv shoulder*. I continued till 1896, when, on leaving for FWland. I resigned, recommending to the Minister of Education, who hod appointed me, that Dr William Brown should be appointed m my place, and tbP w “ done One of the lest official acts hi which I had part was the transferring of Mr Wilson to the Boys’ School as rector m succession to Dr Belcher. I have felt quit© sure that we did the right thii g Mr S 0? was noteager to go. Abundant?; qualified tor the poet wheth he felt happ£ m it may be doubted. . H. ueart was still with the Girls’ School. It -will you to know that within recent mlLhhs I was able to meet again Mr Wilson Ha came across half England to spend a week! end with my wife and myself in the house of our daughter, once his pupil. The vearaWi touched him. lightly. iTw® we know, with the same interest in litem tore and the cultivation of flowers, the same sub-acid humour which the pupils who loved him best understood and appreciated though it was often exercised at tbeir ©xpense Parting from Mr Wilson again probably for the lari, time, I more than ever regretted that he had been lost to Otago. The years pass; men pass. Tears idle tears, rise in the heart and gather to the eyes, in thinking of the days th?t are rra more. You who were school girls in the days we have been recalling, many of you now wives, mothers, masons, lodk back with something of sadness— a feeling common to us all when thinking of the schoolboy spot we ne’er forget though we are forvot. Yet your school time was a B'oii tone; on the who'e, a happy time* *

romantic time, a time to which yon owe all that ia best in the years between. . And so it is the duty of gratitude that brings you out to-day to celebrate with prayer and song the jubilee of your school, thanking God for teachers wise and good—the men and women who os tutors and governors shaped your life at its most plastic stage towards good end. It has been said that education is what remains after everything learned at school is forgotten. Paradox though it looks, this saying is true. Forgetting everything learned at school is indeed impossible. There are facts and dates which stick in the memory—incidents ot history, rules of grammar; simple arithmetic is not altogether beyond us in our later life, nor is the world-map totally unfamiliar. But we forget much. 1 have myself in my time set examination papers; yet to-day I should look foolish if required to answer my own questions. We have all a talent for forgetting. . But though you forgot everything, including the examination paper in which you triumphed, education would remain. Happiness is in the pursuit, not in the acquisition; education is in the endeavouring to do, not in the thing done. You school life meant submission to authority; it meant discipline, it meant give and take of intimacy with others who were partly friends and partly competitors; it meant an impulse onward and upward, an impulse supplied from behind, no doubt, but still a genuine impulse to climb; it meant an intellectual awakening—a wider view of the world lying before you and of the responsibilities awaiting you there; a wider view and a longer perspective. In short, it meant the shaping and fashioning of your nature itself, your character, habits of thinking, outlook on life, and this is education. Next to your home life by the heart of your parents, it is your school life that has made you the women you are to-day, however little of school teaching you may have remembered, however much forgotten. With this thought I leave you. We look bade 50 years—it is as a tale that is told; we look forward 50 years—others will . stand where we stand to-day, will moralise as we moralise, will think of us as shadows that flitted and were gone. We pass; the path that each man trod Is dim, or will bo dim, with weeds: What fame Is left for human deeds In endless age? It rests with God THU OPENING SERVICE. TO THE EDITOR. See,— Undoubtedly the keynote of the opening service of the jubilee celebrations this afternoon was “Our finest hope : a finest memory” that,. touched with its accompanying' responsibility. The Rev. Tulloch Yuille’s welcome to all those gathered in Knox Church was tinged with it; it was the motif of the Scripture reading; the pathos in the hymns sung, as well aa the prayers offered, was relieved by touches of joy and hope for the days to come; and it was the predominant note in Dean Fitchett’s address.

Of all the women present, old and young, few could resist “tears rising in the.heart and gathering in the eyes when thinking of the days that are no more.” Very strongly did the service bring to mind those lines of Walter C. Smith’s, written of his student days; which apply to schools as well as to colleges, or, indeed, to any institution whose aim is fuller life, mental, moral, and spiritual. Will you kindly insert them, for all of the old girls who, for a few days at least, are living over agam the days in the vanished past?

SCATTERED. Scattered to ©aet and west and north. Some with the faint heart, eomo the stout, Each to lie battle of life went forth, And all alone we must fight it out. W© had been gathered from cot and grange, From the mooikmd farm and the terraced street; • Brought together by chances strange. And knit together by friendships a week. Not in tho sunshine, not in the rain, Not in the night of the eters untold, Shall w© ever all meet again. Or be os w© were in the days of old. But as ships cross , and more cheerily go, Having changed tidings upon th© sea, So I am richer by them, I know, And they are not poorer, I trust, by me. —I am, ©to., E. Rogebs. Roslyn, ’ January 30. THE FIRST WOMAN GRADUATE IN MEDICINE. TO THK EDITOB. Sxe, —In the interesting sketch of the Otago Girls’ High School, contributed to your paper,, a mistake has been mode, which, if it is only from an historical point of view, is better corrected. I refer to the statement that Margaret Craickshank was tho first lady to graduate in medicine in New Zealand. The facts are that Emily xi. Siodeherg was the pioneer in medicine. She left the High School a year before Miss. Craickshank, and commenced her . medical studies at. the University. Tho next year Miss Craickshank followed. Miss Siedeberg took her degree a year before Miss Craickshank, and was the first lady to graduate in medicine in the dominion. She went to. the' Homo Country to prosecute her studies,;. and remained away for two years. During this interval of lame Miss Craickshank' took her degree, and at once started practice with Dr Barclay at Waimate. The latter lady was therefore the first to start in practice in New Zealand, but not the first to take her degree.—l am, etc., INTERESTED. ’