Gregoria de Jesus, dubbed "La Princesa del Katipunan" by Jose P. Santos, was a good student, having won "in an examination given by the governor-general and the town curate and was the recipient of a silver medal with blue ribbon." ["Autobiography of Gregoria de Jesus," Translated by Leandro H. Fernandez, Philippine Magazine, June 1930]

Her normal childhood masked the coming of a full and mature life of adventure, crusade and romance.

De Jesus married Andres Bonifacio in both Catholic and Katipunan rites in March 1893, and on the very night of her wedding, she was initiated into the KKK. Doing all that she could do for the propagation of the patriotic secret society, Mrs. Bonifacio served as the custodian of important KKK belongings (revolver, seal, all the papers) - a dangerous undertaking.

She was "the first to translate or decipher the (Katipunan) acts in code which Emilio Jacinto sent to me in Pasig with a piece of bone extracted from his thigh when he was hit by a bullet at an engagement in Nagcarlan, Laguna."

Along with her husband, De Jesus was in the battlefield. "I went through a number of adventurous experiences during the revolution. I had no fear of facing danger, not even death itself, whenever I accompanied the soldiers in battle, impelled as I was then by no other desire than to see unfurled the flag of an independent Philippines, and, as I was present in and witnessed many encounters, I was considered a soldier, and to be a true one I learned how to ride, to shoot a rifle, and to manipulate other weapons which I had occasions actually to use.

"I have known what it is to sleep on the ground without tasting food the whole day, to drink dirty water from mud holes or the sap of vines which, though bitter, tasted delicious because of my thirst. When I come to think of my life in those days, considering my youth then, I am surprised how I stood it all, and how I was spared."

In her recorded life story, Mrs. Bonifacio concluded with a counsel for the youth in the form of a decalogue. Two items therein were:

. "Acquire some knowledge in the line or field of work for which you are best fitted so that you can be useful to your country."

. "Respect your teachers who help you to see and understand, for you owe them your education as you owe your parents your life."

How difficult is it to live a life of meaning?

"The great mass of human beings are not acutely selfish. After the age of about 30 they almost abandon the sense of being individuals at all - and live chiefly for others, or are simply smothered under drudgery. But there is also the minority of gifted, willful people who are determined to live their own lives to the end, and writers belong in this class."

Thus did George Orwell devote his time and energies: for the printed and spoken word, a career in journalism and literature, a passion for books and great writings.

In his 1946 essay, "Why I Write," Orwell identified four great motives for writing: sheer egoism, aesthetic enthusiasm, historical impulse, and political purpose. These "impulses must war against one another" and "fluctuate from person to person and from time to time," and in Orwell's nature, the first three motives outweigh the fourth.

Be that as it may, the coming of Hitler, the Spanish Civil War and other events in 1936-37 "turned the scale" and Orwell assigned "every line of serious work. AGAINST totalitarianism and FOR democratic socialism."

Orwell's turn to politics as an avocation finds parallel in an American zoologist's foray into public service.

Dean C. Worcester was Secretary of the Interior of the Philippine Islands in 1901-1913 and a member of the Philippine Commission in 1900-1913. His spot in the US colonial administration stemmed from an unlikely tree: collecting specimens.

"As a boy I went through several of the successive stages of collector's fever from which the young commonly suffer. First it was postage stamps; then birds' nests, obtained during the winter season when no longer of use to their builders. Later I was allowed to collect eggs, and finally the birds themselves. At one time my great ambition was to become a taxidermist."

"I eventually lost my ambition to be a taxidermist but did not lose my interest in zoology and botany. While a student at the University of Michigan, I specialized in these subjects. I was fortunate in having as one of my instructors Professor Joseph B. Steere, then the head of the Department of Zoology. Professor Steere, who had been a great traveler, at times entertained his classes with wonderfully interesting tales of adventure.

"My ambition was fired by his stories and when in the spring of 1886 he announced his intention of returning to the Philippines the following year to take up and prosecute anew zoological work which he had begun there in 1874, offering to take with him a limited number of his students who were to have the benefit of his knowledge of Spanish and of his wide experience as a traveler and collector, and were in turn to allow him to work up their collections after their return to the United States, I made up my mind to go." ["The Philippines Past and Present," Volume I, 1914]

Worcester's fateful first trip to the tropics impacted his subsequent life. Although he already decided that "the Philippines were not for me" and obtained a study leave in Europe, his mistake of passing through Washington for New York led to an appointment as President McKin-ley's personal representative.

Worcester was the fifth member of the Schurman Commission and later appointed to the Second Philippine Commission "without a day's break in my period of service."

Our final example is John Stuart Mill whose "Autobiography" contains an important passage about education, to wit:

"Most boys or youths who have had much knowledge drilled into them, have their mental capacities not strengthened, but overlaid by it. They are crammed with mere facts, and with the opinions or phrases of other people, and these are accepted as a substitute for the power to form opinions of their own; and thus the sons of eminent fathers, who have spared no pains in their education, so often grow up mere parroters of what they have learnt, incapable of using their minds except in the furrows traced for them. Mine, however, was not an education of cram. My father never permitted anything which I learnt to degenerate into a mere exercise of memory. He strove to make the understanding not only go along with every step of the teaching, but, if possible, precede it. Anything which could be found out by thinking I never was told, until I had exhausted my efforts to find it out for myself."