SIXTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART VIII. 881 



graduation day must be postponed while she goes back into the country, 

 to teach, or do something to help pay for her schooling, it is nothing lost, 

 for at least half of our education lies in learning to apply what we learn. 

 And would it not be better that she graduate at nineteen, able to use 

 what she has learned than to graduate at sixteen with much of the worK 

 carelessly gone over? Too young to teach or to assume responsibility 

 of any kind, a period of idleness soon spoils all. 



Many of our best teachers are girls from the farm who have earned, 

 at least a part of their own education. 



Of course in this day and age of the world, teaching is not the only 

 field open to women, and the girl from the farm will find she is not 

 excluded if she be able and willing to work. 



But there comes, from some where, a complaint that it so frequently 

 happens that after a girl graduates, instead of going on and working 

 out a career for herself,^ she marries. Well, what if she does? Has a 

 married woman no use for education Hasn't the cry of the country al- 

 ways been "Better wives," "Better mothers," "More intelligent home- 

 makers?" How are we to get them if we don't educate them? 



On the other hand, some say that educating a woman destroys her 

 taste for marriage. As if any thing on earth could ever do that. 



If the home is the corner-stone of the nation, should the educated 

 woman consider it beneath her to try and help make one? To be sure, 

 she may not need a store of Latin or geometry in the management of 

 a home but she will need the mind discipline those studies stand for. 

 Many a time will she be called upon to face a hard problem till it iS' 

 mastered, as she learned to do over her algebra. And if, in her school 

 work, she has learned to love good literature, she has a fund that will 

 never fail her. She may forget her theorems, and equations but she 

 will not forget the grand thoughts she gleaned from the poets. Her 

 home may be isolated but those who are accompanied by good thoughts 

 are never alone.' She may do without many needed things but she 

 will occasionally have a good book, for she will know that good mind 

 food is quite as important as good body food. Perhaps you have heard 

 this little story but it is worth repeating. A woman came into a store 

 in a lonely little town far out west, and asked for a couple of books for 

 children; one a book on Nature study and the other a good system of 

 penmanship. They were not to be had. A traveling-man present 

 expressed surprise that such books were used in the schools of that re- 

 mote place. She answered that her children had never been to school; 

 they were five miles from the nearest neighbor, and she had been their 

 only teacher; she had come sixteen miles to get those books that day, 

 and how disappointed the children would be when she came home with- 

 out them! I think the story ended with the travelling-man taking her 

 name and address and promising to forward the books from the nearest 

 place where they could be procured. But in any case, who would say 

 that that woman's education was useless in such a place? Who would 

 say that it would have been just as well for her and her family if she 

 had had no education? Isolation or society, ballot or no ballot, was she 

 not casting a strong vote for the good of her country? 



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