io 4 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



on railway or street cars to meet their recitations in some college. The 

 greatest instrument of culture in a college is the 'college atmosphere,' 

 the personal influence exerted by its professors and students. The col- 

 lege atmosphere develops feebly in the rush of a great city. The ' spur- 

 etudenten' or railway track students, as the Germans call them, the 

 students who live far from the university, get very little of this atmos- 

 phere. The young woman who attends the university under these con- 

 ditions contributes nothing to the university atmosphere, and therefore 

 receives very little from it. She may attend her recitations and pass 

 her examinations, but she is in all essential respects 'in absentia,' and 

 so far as the best influences of the university are concerned, she is 

 neither 'coeducated' nor 'educated.' The ' spur '-student system is bad 

 enough for young men, virtually wasting half their time. With young 

 women the condition of continuous railroading, attempted study on 

 the trains, the necessary frowsiness of railway travel and the laxness 

 of manners it cultivates, are all elements very undesirable in higher 

 education. If young women enter the colleges, they should demand 

 that suitable place be made for them. Failing to find this, they should 

 look for it somewhere else. Associations which develop vulgarity can- 

 not be used for the promotion of culture either for men or for women. 

 That the influence of cultured women on the whole is opposed to vul- 

 garity is a powerful argument for education, and is the secret basis of 

 much of the agitation against it. 



With all this it is necesary for us to recognize actual facts. There 

 is no question that a reaction has set in against coeducation. The 

 number of those who proclaim their unquestioning faith is relatively 

 fewer than would have been the case ten years ago. This change in 

 sentiment is not universal. It will be nowhere revolutionary. Young 

 women will not be excluded from any institution where they are now 

 welcomed, nor will the almost universal rule of coeducation in state 

 institutions be in any way reversed. The reaction shows itself in a 

 little less civility of boys towards their sisters and the sisters of other 

 boys; in a little more hedging on the part of the professors; in a little 

 less pointing with pride on the part of college executive officials. There 

 is nothing tangible in all this. Its existence may be denied or referred 

 to ignorance or prejudice. 



But such as it is, we may for a moment inquire into its causes. 

 First as to those least worthy. Here we may place the dislike of the 

 idle boy to have his failures witnessed by women who can do better. I 

 have heard of such feelings, but I have no evidence that they play much 

 actual part in the question at issue. Inferior women do better work 

 than inferior men because they are more docile and have much less to 

 detract their minds. But there exists a strong feeling among rowdyish 

 young men that the preference of women interferes with rowdyish 



