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THE UNIVERSITY AND WOMEN’S WORK 75 
not mean only one who has gone far in some abstract or 
professional study. Can she not become highly educated 
as a home-maker, in the same sense as a man may be 
educated for engineering ; that is to say, thoroughly equipped 
with the branches of special knowledge related to the calling ? 
I believe without doubt she can, and I feel confident that 
when the way is open we shall find plenty of young women of 
talent who have the inclination and the opportunity to devote 
a few years to this kind of higher education, and who will 
return from it ready to enter with redoubled interest and 
usefulness into the realm of home life, or to take up one of the 
many posts in civic or social work for which the same type of 
training is so desirable. 
I have already alluded to the existing schools of domestic 
economy. These schools have long been doing a most valu- 
able work, and I particularly desire that we should recognize 
and acknowledge their services as fully as they deserve. They 
have in many cases been established by the arduous and self- 
sacrificing labours of women zealous for the public interest ; in 
others they have formed a section of the work of polytechnics 
and kindred institutions. For many years past I have hada 
semi-official connexion with one of the best of them, and it-is 
through this that I have become impressed with the great 
importance of the work they have in hand and with the 
difficulties they have to face. The first demand made of 
these schools is that they should turn out pupils skilled in the 
practice of the domestic arts. This, of course, is reasonable © 
enough, but it has made it very difficult for those in charge 
to include as much of the theoretical or scientific element of the 
subjects as they would have wished, and the consequence is 
that they have recruited their pupils largely from the ranks of 
those whose tastes and talents are of a practical kind. It has 
long been my desire to see a somewhat different type of 
training attempted, for ever since I took an interest in these 
