574 



POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Certainly, only by education and cul- 

 ture! If the college does not give these, 

 reform but do not eliminate it. 



Let us glance for a moment at the 

 alternative opened to girls if they do 

 not go to college. Our college girls 

 ccme mainly, I think, largely at least, 

 from our upper middle classes. Sup- 

 pose our girl of seventeen or eighteen 

 has just finished her school life, what 

 is she to do ? Dr. Smith says : ' Marry.' 

 But really, it seems to me, she will 

 have to wait until she is asked — and 

 meanwhile she will have to occupy 

 herself in some way. The fact of her 

 entering college does not prevent any 

 young man from asking her hand and 

 many a girl leaves college to be mar- 

 ried. The question to be solved is 

 simply of how the time intervening 

 between school and marriage is to be 

 passed. If Dr. Smith will study care- 

 fully the girls who do not go to college, 

 but who devote themselves to social 

 functions, I think I may venture to 

 predict that his choice of his future 

 daughter-in-law would be more likely to 

 fall upon an earnest college girl than 

 upon one of the social denizens, and 

 that the chances of her having extrava- 

 gant tastes, indolent habits or poor con- 

 stitution are less than they would be 

 in the case of the less cultured girl. I 

 believe, but am not sure, that statistics 

 have shown that divorces are much 

 less common among college women than 

 among those who have not been to 

 college. 



That a girl's education should not 

 be merely intellectual I readily admit. 

 Sewing, cooking and housework are as 

 much a part of their preparation for 

 their life work as is shop work for our 

 young engineers. But here again we 

 find that mothers are too busy or too 

 indulgent to undertake the task of 

 teaching their daughters and so in the 

 early years the school tries — again with 

 questionable success — to do it for them, 

 and in the later years as a rule it is 

 not done at all — neither for the col- 

 legian nor non-collegian. 



It is perfectly natural that a girl 

 who has grown up without having done 

 any manual work should not like it 

 when the necessity for it arises, but I 

 dcubt very much whether it can be 

 shown that the intellectual girl dis- 

 likes it more than the non-intellectual, 

 and our college girl, if she has bene- 

 fited by her course as she should, has 

 learned the possibility of applying her 

 powers to an uncongenial task and has 

 many more powers to apply than her 

 less educated sister. Were I a hungry 

 husband, I should have more hope of a 

 palatable dinner prepared by a college- 

 bred wife ignorant of cookery, than 

 from one equally ignorant who lacked 

 the college training. 



A word as regards the best age for 

 a woman to marry. It seems to me 

 that the chances for marital happiness 

 are best where a woman marries, at 

 about 22, an age at which she can have 

 easily finished her college course and at 

 which she is certainly better qualified 

 to judge of the qualities of the man 

 who asks her to marry him than she 

 wa9 four years before. Suppose she 

 marries a man but a few years older 

 than herself, there is plenty of time for 

 them to have a family of five or six 

 children, which is as many as even 

 an energetic mother can well attend to. 

 Probably her demands in the choice 

 of a husband will be more exacting, 

 not as regards wealth, but as regards 

 mind and soul. Could a better stimu- 

 lus be found for the improvement of 

 our young men? 



As to the physical health of our 

 college girls, I feel sure it will com- 

 pare favorably with that of non-col- 

 legians. Neither class is as well as it 

 should be, the reason being, in my 

 judgment, not excessive intellectual ex- 

 ertion but undue excitement and 

 anxiety. The college girl who is chair- 

 man of the dramatic association, or the 

 ncn-college girl who is chairman of the 

 entertainment committee in church, 

 alike suffer from a mental strain which 

 is much more likely to prove injurious 



