SHORTER ARTICLES AND DISCUSSION. 



279 



SHORTER ARTICLES AND DISCUSSION". 



ALUMNA'S CHILDREN AGAIN. 



Ax article in the May number of the 

 Popular Science Monthly, entitled 

 ' Alumna's Children,' was recently 

 called to my attention by a woman 

 who, though not a college graduate, is 

 ' decidedly a schooled woman ' and the 

 mother of five girls. " I had planned," 

 she said, " to let all my girls go to col- 

 lege, but I do want to be a grandmother 

 some time." 



For answer I heaped the anxious 

 lady's lap with photographs, photo- 

 graphs of babies, babies large and 

 small, babies masculine and feminine, 

 asleep and awake, clean and dirty, 

 elegantly dressed and not dressed at 

 all, but every one a baby to exult over 

 and all the children of my college 

 friends. 



Far be it from me to dispute the 

 Massachusetts vital statistics, and 

 farther yet to dissent from ' Alumna's ' 

 conclusion that girls in the ' larva 

 stage ' need an intelligent care which 

 too few of them receive. But it is not 

 that admirably sane and practical con- 

 clusion, nor yet the irrefutable official 

 statistics forming the author's premise 

 that strikes dismay to the mother of 

 five and produces even in those less 

 directly interested an uncomfortable 

 impression of things being dreadfully 

 wrong somewhere. No, it is that dis- 

 mal array of tragic incidents drawn 

 from the author's personal knowledge, 

 and her consequent theory of causes 

 for the officially vouched for 1.8. It 

 seems only fair, then, to admit to 

 consideration the personal experience 

 of another alumna, an alumna of 

 slightly later date, who may, from that 

 very fact, be able to bring to the mat- 

 ter a slightly different point of view. 



I, too, have known of just such brave 

 struggles against physical odds as 



' Alumna ' reports. I, too, have known 

 of heartrending defeat and dearly 

 bought victory. But the women who 

 have suffered them are not college 

 women. Possibly my experience in 

 this line with my college frends has 

 been an exceptionally happy one, but 

 in granting that possibility we must 

 grant likewise that ' Alumna's ' may 

 have been exceptional as well. It is fair, 

 therefore, to balance one against the 

 other. I do not wonder that the 

 mother of five was troubled by 

 Alumna's article. It is obviously 

 deeply sincere and genuinely thoughtful. 

 But when I had read it I glanced up at 

 the photograph of one of the sweetest, 

 sanest mothers who ever presided 

 wisely over the destinies of children, 

 which shows her sitting on one end of 

 a sea-saw with her baby in her lap, 

 smiling up at four little redheads 

 ranged in ascending scale at the other 

 end of the board. Certainly neither col- 

 lege nor preparation for it has robbed 

 of their dues her ten years of married 

 life. 



Naturally at this date I can tell of 

 few such families, for most of the col- 

 lege women I know are younger than 

 this one. It is only a few years since 

 my graduation, and three quarters of 

 the class are still unmarried. But all 

 except a few predestined spinsters are 

 still well on the youthful side of thirty, 

 and the percentage of married members 

 is likely to be considerably raised in 

 the next ten years. And of those who 

 are married not only in my own class, 

 but, with a single exception, among my 

 other college friends as well, not one 

 has failed to bear a healthy child 

 within two years of her marriage. 



Naturally it is of my own class that 

 I think first, the class whose average 

 scholarship is the highest on the rec- 



