456 STATE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



they can reasonably claim in our life? \VonH»n do not need to think 

 more of these 11iin<i,s. Tlicv must think less of tliem, but to more pur- 

 pose. They must lind time somewhere for the duties which they owe 

 to themselves. 



The four walls of the home have limited women's activities too lonj;. 

 A too close attention to our daily wants has contined their souls to the 

 world of little thinp:s. We must not consider the home a little world 

 by itself, shut otl from all the rest of the world and its interests. Ou 

 the contrary, the home is the very heart of our social body; from it are 

 forced the life-giving elements into all the organs of human activity, 

 l^he character of our home life means more, will accomplish more for 

 society than any legislation or reform ever can. We feel that the best 

 that culture and science can give it, is none too good. IIow imperative, 

 then, that the woman in that home should be a wise, cultivated, high- 

 minded woman, and that her outlook on the world into which she is 

 building should be broad and free, and that her soul be unhampered to 

 express itself freely! 



What is to help her to a freer, more comprehensive womanhood? 

 Many things may help her, but whatever a woman is, that she will 

 always be. Education and environment may influence her, but she can 

 never quite separate herself from herself. No one can. But a higher 

 education is, perhaps, the greatest help she can have in realizing her 

 true self. It need not, perhaps ought not, to be identical with a man's 

 in every particular, but it must certainly be as comprehensive. It must 

 teach her first of all, to be. 



To do this, it must meet three requirements. First, it must be broad. 

 It must call into play all the powers of her being; it must teach her to 

 feel as well as to think; and it must give her such an outlook that she 

 may see the universe in" its true proportions, and her own relation to it. 



Second. It must be personal. It must permit such freedom in election 

 of subjects that, in addition to what we may call the universal or broad- 

 ening element, the cravings of her own individual nature may be satis- 

 fied and her inherent gifts and capabilities drawn out and developed. 

 The girl who finds her ideals of the good, the true, the beautiful, in 

 music or art, may not care to go deeply into the classics, nor will the 

 girl w^hose higher nature is fed by the vastness of- science or math- 

 ematics be likely to make literature her specialty. Yet the education 

 of each may be made equally as broad. 



Third. It must contain enough of what w^e are pleased to call "the 

 practical" to enable her to lay hold of the common duties and affairs of 

 life intelligently and easily. 



After her four short years of college training, a girl will have learned 

 many things besides what she has found in lecture-room or laboratory. 

 She will have gained the independence and steadfastness of purpose 

 which results from serious work done shoulder to shoulder with other 

 workers; she will have learned not to be afraid of her enthusiasms and 

 her honest, because rational, convictions; from the cosmopolitan char- 

 acter of college society she will also have gained a peculiarly true un- 

 derstanding of, and sympathy with, human nature. She wall under- 

 stand, even though perhaps only in a vague way, the common ties and 

 aspirations which, after all, make humanity one in essence. 



