To a largely increasing
number of young girls college doors are opening every year. Every
year adds to the number of men who feel as a friend of mine, a
successful lawyer in a great city, felt when in talking of the
future of his four little children he said, "For the two boys it is
not so serious, but I lie down at night afraid to die and leave my
daughters only a bank account." Year by year, too, the experiences
of life are teaching mothers that happiness does not necessarily
come to their daughters when accounts are large and banks are sound,
but that on the contrary they take grave risks when they trust
everything to accumulated wealth and the chance of a happy marriage.
Our American girls themselves are becoming aware that they need the
stimulus, the discipline, the knowledge, the interests of the
college in addition to the school, if they are to prepare themselves
for the most serviceable lives.
But there are still parents who say,
"There is no need that my daughter should teach; then why should she
go to college?" I will not reply that college training is a life
insurance for a girl, a pledge that she possesses the disciplined
ability to earn a living for herself and others in case of need, for
I prefer to insist on the importance of giving every girl, no matter
what her present circumstances, a special training in some one thing
by which she can render society service, not amateur but of an
expert sort, and service too for which it will be willing to pay a
price. The number of families will surely increase who will follow
the example of an eminent banker whose daughters have been given
each her specialty. One has chosen music, and has gone far with the
best masters in this country and in Europe, so far that she now
holds a high rank among musicians at home and abroad. Another has
taken art, and has not been content to paint pretty gifts for her
friends, but in the studios of New York, Munich, and Paris, she has
won the right to be called an artist, and in her studio at home to
paint portraits which have a market value. A third has proved that
she can earn her living, if need be, by her exquisite jellies,
preserves, and sweetmeats. Yet the house in the mountains, the house
by the sea, and the friends in the city are not neglected, nor are
these young women found less attractive because of their special
accomplishments.
While it is not true that all girls
should go to college any more than that all boys should go, it is
nevertheless true that they should go in greater numbers than at
present. They fail to go because they, their parents and their
teachers, do not see clearly the personal benefits distinct from the
commercial value of a college training. I wish here to discuss these
benefits, these larger gifts of the college life,--what they may be,
and for whom they are waiting.
It is undoubtedly true that many girls
are totally unfitted by home and school life for a valuable college
course. These joys and successes, these high interests and
friendships, are not for the self-conscious and nervous invalid, nor
for her who in the exuberance of youth recklessly ignores the laws
of a healthy life. The good society of scholars and of libraries and
laboratories has no place and no attraction for her who finds no
message in Plato, no beauty in mathematical order, and who never
longs to know the meaning of the stars over her head or the flowers
under her feet. Neither will the finer opportunities of college life
appeal to one who, until she is eighteen (is there such a girl in
this country?), has felt no passion for the service of others, no
desire to know if through history or philosophy, or any study of the
laws of society, she can learn why the world is so sad, so hard, so
selfish as she finds it, even when she looks upon it from the most
sheltered life. No, the college cannot be, should not try to be, a
substitute for the hospital, reformatory or kindergarten. To do its
best work it should be organized for the strong, not for the weak;
for the high-minded, self-controlled, generous, and courageous
spirits, not for the indifferent, the dull, the idle, or those who
are already forming their characters on the amusement theory of
life. All these perverted young people may, and often do, get large
benefit and invigoration, new ideals, and unselfish purposes from
their four years' companionship with teachers and comrades of a
higher physical, mental, and moral stature than their own. I have
seen girls change so much in college that I have wondered if their
friends at home would know them,--the voice, the carriage, the
unconscious manner, all telling a story of new tastes and habits and
loves and interests, that had wrought out in very truth a new
creature. Yet in spite of this I have sometimes thought that in
college more than elsewhere the old law holds, "To him that hath
shall be given and he shall have abundance, but from him who hath
not shall be taken away even that which he seemeth to have." For it
is the young life which is open and prepared to receive which
obtains the gracious and uplifting influences of college days.
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