Education as a Factor in Civilization. 249 



doors to be cautiously set ajar for the possible entrance 

 of women, or have thrown them wide open with hospitable 

 invitation. At Harvard, the feminine candidate for a de- 

 gree must accept in its place the certificate which testifies 

 that her scholarship is all that could be desired, but that 

 she is not a man. Princeton is sure that it is a sin 

 against Nature for a woman to take a college course, but 

 cheerfully aids and abets the sinner by giving her a degree 

 if she sins successfully in the college campus. In 

 Boston University, " a woman's a woman, but the sex is 

 but the guinea's stamp ; the brain's the gowd for a' that," 

 and in its last catalogue the names leading four of its 

 classes are not those of men. It is a matter of small 

 wonder to the logical mind that co-education is having so 

 severe a struggle for existence, considering the immense 

 weight of the only argument ever brought against it the 

 only one necessary being so convincing namely, ''Women 

 have not brains enough to study with men. If women 

 study with men, the women will take all the prizes : there- 

 fore women must not be admitted to men's colleges." 



In an age Avhen man lived in castles with walls three 

 feet thick, judiciously and tastefully surrounded by moat 

 and ditch, draw-bridge and portcullis ; spending most of 

 his not particularly valuable time in shooting arrows and 

 pouring hot oil from the tops of his towers upon the 

 heads of his enemies, no one will deny that during these 

 little neighborhood excitements, so far as woman was con- 

 cerned, home was the best place for her. Later, when 

 with axe and gun he cleared tho forest and protected his 

 cabin from wild beasts while seeking food and fuel for its 

 inmates, it was quite according to the fitness of things 

 that the feminine portion of the family should stay in 

 doors to keep the fire and to cook the food. But social 

 safety and comfort are no longer secured by arrow, axe, 

 and gun, but by money made in business and votes cast into 

 a ballot-box. Women's environment is no longer that of 

 bears and barbarians. Homemakers, the world is sus- 

 tained by them, and their office is one of the noblest on 

 earth ; but the appliances which have lightened the labor 

 of the outside world are represented in the household also. 

 Home will always be a good place for woman as for man 

 but it is not always the best place, nor by any means the 

 only place. Perhaps it has been necessary for Avoman's 



