THE EDUCATION OF WOMEN. 29 



showed no physical or mental inability to endure the strain of 

 college life, and apparently lost none of the precious bloom of true 

 womanliness. But no sooner had the system become thoroughly 

 established than a whole world of new social problems was dis- 

 covered in connection with it. The primeval attraction of men 

 and women for each other was not obliterated by the higher edu- 

 cation. Conventionality stood aghast at the primitive and unre- 

 fined social life sometimes found within college walls. The social 

 tone of these new colleges could not be much higher than that of 

 the rural communities from which it came. It was not to be 

 expected that students from progressive but uncultured commu- 

 nities should at once be transformed into dignified, self-restrained, 

 conventionally proper young men and women. 



Eastern scholars and teachers who went West to fill chairs in 

 these colleges were shocked at the crudity which they met ; in 

 their eyes and in the eyes of the cultured New Englander all im- 

 proprieties, unconventionalities, and crudities were the ofi'spring 

 of the vicious principle, coeducation. In New England, conse- 

 quently, the pressure of social conservatism compelled a less rad- 

 ical solution of the impending problem of woman's education. 



Following the type of Vassar, Wellesley, and Smith were 

 founded still with the curriculum based on the old classical model 

 of Harvard and Yale, but with living conditions and social re- 

 straints especially intended to preserve and develop womanliness. 

 A liberal allowance of the classics, a little harmless inorganic sci- 

 ence, some music or art by way of sweetening, and domestic labor 

 as a reminder of housewifely occupations, constituted the regimen 

 of the typical woman's college. No inducements or opportunities 

 were offered for young women to enter any professions except 

 literature and teaching. Curiously enough, few women could be 

 found prepared to fill the professorships except those who had 

 been coeducated at Oberlin, Michigan, and Cornell, and to them 

 was set the task of preserving femininity by a harmlessly miscel- 

 laneous culture. 



Meanwhile the great tide of scientific education had risen ; the 

 evolutionary theory had been proposed, attacked, accepted by the 

 greater scientists. New fields were thus opened to men, which 

 women as yet could not enter. That which they had supposed 

 would insure to them the highest intellectual life no longer suf- 

 ficed. In the larger coeducational colleges, laboratories and 

 elaborate scientific equipments were rapidly acquired. Women, 

 more conservative and true to the traditions of higher education, 

 continued to choose classical courses long after science had become 

 the most prominent feature of the younger institutions. Slowly 

 the women's colleges were compelled to add zoology and physiol- 

 ogy, laboratories and apparatus to their meager courses in science. 



