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The Story of Mary Stewart's Collect (as told by Mary Stewart)The Collect was
written as a personal prayer for the day, and without
any organization in mind. It was written at Longmont, Colorado in 1904
where, just out of college, I was entering my first job as principal of
the local high school. The prayer was offered for publication under the
title, "A Collect for Club Woman," because at the time I felt
that women working together with wide interest for large ends was a new
thing under the sun, and that perhaps they had need for special
petition and mediation of their own and distributed it throughout the
Empire. The first printing of the Collect was in an obscure paragraph in the
column called "Club Notes" in the Delineator, a woman's magazine
no longer published, but at the time nationally popular. Later, copies
were struck off by a local printer for the members of Longmont Fortnightly
Club of Colorado; a federated club. About 1909, Paul Elder and Company
of San Francisco printed it as a wall card. In 1924, wall cards were put
out by Armstrong Stationary Company of Cincinnati. All earlier copies
were signed by Mary Stuart, a spelling used until 1920 as a pen name.
Since then the spelling Stewart has been used both for a pen name and
signature, and the Collect has been so signed. The first women's organization to hear or use the
Collect or to print it in its yearbooks and biennial reports was the General
Federation of Women's Clubs. Since then, it has been reported in many
forms in many lands. The Club CollectKeep us, Oh God, from pettiness: let us be large in thought, in word, in deed. Let us be done with fault-finding, and leave off self seeking. May we put away all pretense and meet each other face to face, without self pity and without prejudice. May we never be hasty in judgment and always generous. Let us take time for all things: make us to grow calm, serene, gentle. Teach us to put into action our better impulses, straight-forward and unafraid. Grant that we may realize it is the little things that create differences, that in the big things of life we are at one. And may we strive to touch and to know the great common human heart of us all, and, Oh Lord God, let us forget not...to be kind! |
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