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 had a 

 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 



