8 
 
 8 
 
 
 BXi**£W 
 
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 
 
 Chap. Copyright No. 
 
 SheltJX'iSfc*f 
 
 &s 
 
 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 
 
College Training 
 
 for Women 
 
 BY 
 
 KATE HOLLADAY CLAGHORN, Ph.D. 
 (yale) 
 
 vU l 
 
 
 New York: 46 East 14TH Street 
 THOMAS Y. CROWELL & COMPANY 
 
 Boston : 100 Purchase Street 
 
 

 Copyright, 1897, 
 By Kate Holladay Claghorn. 
 
 C. J. PETERS & SON, TYPOGRAPHERS, 
 PRESSWORK BY BERWICK & SMITH. 
 
MARTHA HOLLADAY CLAGHORN 
 
 IN GRATEFUL ACKNOWLEDGMENT 
 
 OF WISE COUNSEL AND UNFAILING SYMPATHY 
 
 THIS LITTLE VOLUME 
 
 IS LOVINGLY DEDICATED. 
 
Thanks are due to The Outlook for 
 its courtesy in permitting the author 
 to use, in the preparation of this book, 
 five articles previously contributed by 
 her to its columns. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. What the College can do . . i 
 
 II. The Preparation 31 
 
 III. Choosing a College 64 
 
 IV. Life at College 98 
 
 V. The Graduate Student . . .130 
 
 VI. Alumnae Associations . . . .162 
 VII. The College-Trained Mother . 199 
 VIII. The College- Woman as a Social 
 
 Influence 214 
 
 IX. College Training for the Wage- 
 earner 245 
 
COLLEGE TRAINING FOR 
 WOMEN. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 WHAT THE COLLEGE CAN DO. 
 
 IT does not seem to matter how many 
 times we have found out by past ex- 
 perience that any way of life, any theory 
 carried out into action, any social insti- 
 tution adopted into practice, has both its 
 advantages and its disadvantages, its 
 harms and its helps also for society in 
 general; that the good has never been 
 so good as to make the world completely 
 over; that the bad has never been so 
 z 
 
2 COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 bad but that humanity has contrived to 
 struggle along under it somehow — when 
 we look to the future, we are prone to 
 see in any new scheme or plan all the 
 concentrated and absolute good or evil 
 that has never, in the history of the hu- 
 man race, been embodied in any one 
 institution. It will regenerate the world, 
 to our thinking, or else it will send it to 
 ruin. Little by little, experience of the 
 new plan of life reveals its limitations 
 and imperfections both of good and evil ; 
 we cease to hope so much from it, or to 
 entertain such fears concerning it, and 
 the institution is seen for what it really 
 is, — a centre of certain definite lines of 
 influence, more or less effective in their 
 operation, and more or less restricted in 
 their scope. 
 
 To this latter stage of exact and une- 
 
FOR WOMEN. 3 
 
 motional comprehension, general thought 
 about the collegiate training of women 
 has not altogether arrived. We are still 
 largely in the period of extravagant ex- 
 pectation of comprehensive good or evil. 
 The fear is often expressed that the col- 
 lege woman, as a result of her college 
 experiences, will lose her health, her 
 womanly charm, her chance of matri- 
 mony, her possibilities of motherhood, 
 her taste for domestic life, her interest 
 in her home and in her home-friends ; 
 that society will, in consequence of any 
 considerable spread of collegiate educa- 
 tion among women, be reduced to an 
 unrelated, unattached assemblage of self- 
 centred and self-conscious celibates. On 
 the other hand, the most comprehensive 
 demands are made upon the supposedly 
 exhaustless treasure we expect the col- 
 
4 COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 lege woman to have laid up in the four 
 short years of her college life. She is 
 supposed to be stored, not only with all 
 manner of learning, so that any problem 
 of any nature may be solved by her at 
 any casual presentation of it, but she is 
 required to show a power of invention 
 and original production, to exhale a fine 
 aroma of culture, to present a finished 
 manner and bearing, to be heard in well- 
 modulated accents and delicately chosen 
 words, to make an agreeable and artistic 
 appearance in dress, and to evidence an 
 all-around and harmonious physical de- 
 velopment. 
 
 By this time, however, the college for 
 women has been so long at work that 
 we can perhaps avoid disappointment by 
 looking at it closely in its actual con- 
 crete conditions, to see just what it does 
 
FOR WOMEN. 5 
 
 and can do, and just what it does not 
 and cannot do. 
 
 In the first place, we may expect the 
 college to open to the student the great 
 stores of information collected by the 
 human race in its long journey out of 
 the past. Of late a wholesome reaction 
 has taken place against the idea that the 
 imparting of fact is the only business of 
 teaching; but this reaction has now gone 
 so far that there is danger of our forget- 
 ting how indispensable, after all, is a 
 sure and easy command of mere brute 
 fact in the endeavor to deal with most 
 problems. The thinker can have his ef- 
 fect in the world about him only by tak- 
 ing account of what is really there; he 
 can have effect upon the minds of the 
 people in it only by taking account of 
 what their minds contain. In old times 
 
6 COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 the accessible stock of information about 
 the concrete facts of life and the world 
 was so small that any thinker who exer- 
 cised his mind on its problems not only 
 could, but was compelled to, present a 
 large proportion of theory to a small 
 proportion of definitely known truth ; by 
 to-day, however, so vast a bulk of fact 
 has been gathered, and is so generally 
 accessible, that to build theory upon the 
 slender foundations allowable in those 
 older times will brand the thinker as a 
 sciolist and a pretender. The college, 
 then, if it wants to influence life and 
 thought through its graduate, must teach 
 facts, and more persistently and insis- 
 tently than ever. 
 
 It must, besides, teach some principles 
 of selection and arrangement to make 
 those resources of fact available. The 
 
FOR WOMEN. 7 
 
 more the student has to take into her 
 mind, the more necessary it is that she 
 should stow it away in good order, so 
 that she can know what is there, and 
 what it is good for. The college should 
 teach her to relate her acquirements to 
 certain leading lines of thought, around 
 which they may cluster naturally, and 
 hold together by the force of their rela- 
 tion. It should teach her to separate 
 the important from the unimportant in 
 that relation, the relevant from the ir- 
 relevant ; that which typifies, explains, or 
 illustrates from that which is not so typi- 
 cal or explanatory ; that which forms one 
 link in a continuous chain of develop- 
 ment, either logical or concrete, from 
 that which is presented without its cause 
 on the one hand and its effect on the 
 other. 
 
8 COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 Facts and a method, — the matter and 
 form of knowledge, — the acquirement 
 of these is the result that the college 
 aims at directly and ostensibly. For 
 this it plans in its curriculum ; the steps 
 to this can be set down in black and 
 white in its catalogue. 
 
 There are, besides, certain indirect 
 results of the college discipline brought 
 about by the circumstances under which 
 the direct and intended results are pro- 
 duced that are less definitely noticed, 
 and perhaps even more worthy of atten- 
 tion, — "by-products " of the educational 
 process, so to speak, which, like the 
 "by-products" of certain mechanical 
 and chemical processes, may turn out 
 to be of as much if not of more value 
 than the main product itself. 
 
 Such "by-products" are especially 
 
FOR WOMEN. 9 
 
 manifested in those elements of feeling 
 rather than of thought, of taste rather 
 than of intellectual discrimination, that 
 go to make up that elusively indefinite 
 complex we know as personal character. 
 The student leaves college not only with 
 certain definite intellectual traits estab- 
 lished, but with certain ways of looking 
 at things, and of bearing herself in rela- 
 tion to them. An intricate network of 
 preferences and dislikes, ideals, notions, 
 fancies, prejudices, perhaps, has formed 
 itself in her mind, and will determine 
 largely the uses and availability of her 
 mental equipment. How is this net- 
 work woven ? 
 
 Chief among the influences formative 
 of personal character is the personal 
 character of others. Within the college 
 walls, whatever relations the student 
 
IO COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 may have besides with the outside 
 world, she is under three sets of influ- 
 ences, — that of the teaching body, that 
 of the governing body, and that of the 
 student body as a whole. The college 
 instructor may teach directly, in set les- 
 son, facts and a method ; he teaches 
 indirectly, in every word he says, in 
 every look and act, the elements of his 
 own character. One will come before 
 his class a daily lesson in vanity, un- 
 worthy emulation, showiness, envy, and 
 jealousy ; another will give indirect, but 
 none the less effective, instruction in the 
 arts of the tyrant, — browbeating, bully- 
 ing, and sarcasm ; another will display 
 carelessness of duty, and carry out in 
 practice the principle that the merce- 
 nary motive is the strongly constraining 
 one; another will evidence in his own 
 
FOR WOMEN. I I 
 
 person the power of the flesh ; still an- 
 other will teach by his presence an un- 
 wearied enthusiasm in pursuit of the 
 best, a noble largeness of sympathy and 
 purity of motive, and that disinterested 
 devotion to truth and to humanity which 
 is the crown of the scholar's life. 
 
 Perhaps the most interesting of the 
 influences at work upon the student is 
 that of the student body of which she 
 forms a part. This influence has always 
 been vaguely recognized. It has been 
 remarked many a time that the college 
 boy learns more from his fellows than 
 from his teachers; but little definite 
 thought has been given to find out just 
 what that influence is, how far it ex- 
 tends, what, exactly, are the lessons it 
 tries to teach, and what means it em- 
 ploys to teach them. We are now learn- 
 
12 COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 ing to think of a social group as a 
 collective person, with thoughts and 
 feelings of its own, and to believe that 
 from it is developed the individual per- 
 son — a result, not a cause, of the social 
 personality. The group is the origi- 
 nally active power ; the individual is 
 the result: the group character is not 
 formed by adding together the individ- 
 ual characters of its members ; those in- 
 dividual characters are formed by contact 
 with the group character. The student 
 body of a college is one of those " social 
 persons ;" and it is interesting to watch 
 in it the same formative process going on 
 that was at work in the beginning to es- 
 tablish our human traits, and has been at 
 work ever since, in some way or other, 
 to shape them. 
 
 A complete study of the student-group 
 
FOR WOMEN. 13 
 
 as a sociological force has not yet been 
 made ; certain leading traits are, how- 
 ever, obvious. There is a curious inter- 
 est attaching to the study of this group 
 from the fact that it parallels in many 
 features the primitive group of human 
 society in general. Just as in the de- 
 velopment of the physical organism the 
 human creature in its successive embry- 
 onic and infantile forms shows the stages 
 traversed by the succession of species 
 in their struggle upward to man, so the 
 group formed of the young of the race 
 reproduces the traits manifested in the 
 group of the young race. The first no- 
 table characteristic common to the col- 
 lege-group and primitive society is the 
 great relative control of the whole over 
 the parts. In both the group dominates 
 the individual with tyrannical sway; in 
 
14 COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 neither is the individual developed so 
 far as to be able to stand upon his own 
 character and judgment. Every one 
 knows how susceptible the young are 
 to opinion; the criticism, ridicule, or 
 approval of their kind seems about the 
 only influences they are really and deep- 
 ly touched by. Ethnology teaches how 
 strong a trait in primitive races is their 
 abasement before the same impalpable 
 force. The girl going to college finds 
 that she must conform closely to certain 
 well understood rules of manners and 
 morals ; the primitive tribesman is born 
 into a society governed by an elaborate 
 code, which neither he nor any one else 
 would think it proper to disobey or 
 change. Another obvious trait of the 
 college-personality also common to 
 primitive man is that its code has more 
 
FOR WOMEN. 15 
 
 to do with manners than morals, with 
 acts than thoughts, with rites and cere- 
 monies than with intentions and motives. 
 The " college-spirit " prescribes certain 
 ways of behavior, speech, and dress as 
 fitting or the reverse, and shapes the 
 outer man or woman into conformity 
 with its own type. 
 
 Like primitive man, too, the college 
 personality lays down an unwritten code 
 of tradition and custom, rather than a 
 written code of rule and regulation. The 
 young are commonly thought of as the 
 arch-radicals of nature, the born de- 
 stroyers of all rule and law. It is, how- 
 ever, largely their very subservience to 
 a rule of law, unformulated, unwritten, 
 the existence of which is therefore large- 
 ly unsuspected, but none the less real, 
 that makes them break the formulated, 
 
l6 COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 written law of adult life when, as so often 
 happens, it runs counter to their own. 
 So it can occur that in the college the 
 student often appears as the natural 
 enemy of all set rule and regulation, 
 while she is really influenced in every 
 act of her daily life by the stringent law 
 of the " college-spirit," which acts, not 
 by definitely prescribed punishment or 
 reward for a definite act, but by an 
 equally effective process of suppression 
 or encouragement, carried on by the 
 subtle suggestion of look, tone, and gen- 
 eral attitude on the part of the group. 
 
 The lessons that the college-group 
 teaches are, in the main, wholesome 
 ones. In the first place, by its own 
 intolerance, it opens the way to toler- 
 ance and a wider view of things on the 
 part of its individual member. Its first 
 
FOR WOMEN. 17 
 
 work, preparatory to teaching its own 
 special lessons, is to crack the shell of 
 personal prejudice and local peculiarity, 
 showing the student that her standard is 
 not that absolute canon of truth and 
 propriety she may have thought it. It 
 frowns upon eccentricity, and a desire 
 to make one's self conspicuous. It 
 shows its member that within the group- 
 limits are other individuals of other per- 
 sonal and local traits than her own, 
 whom the group values quite as highly 
 as it does her. Social and local distinc- 
 tions being thus made subordinate to the 
 one purpose of constraining conformity 
 to a "college-type," the individual may 
 learn to think of them as relative and 
 transitory in other relations, and will 
 begin to recognize and value the fun- 
 damental traits of our common human- 
 ity in their persistence and force. 
 
1 8 COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 Having cleared the ground of all ob- 
 stacles of individual peculiarity, the 
 group proceeds to its own positive les- 
 sons. It teaches its member not to 
 put her own private interest above the 
 interests of the group. She is not al- 
 lowed to ignore its calls ; she is made 
 ashamed of preferring her own ease to 
 its benefit. In all her comings and 
 goings, in all her acts and words, she 
 must have regard to the dignity and 
 decorum of the group as represented in 
 her person ; she must preserve its honor 
 untarnished, whatever her own private 
 temptations or occasions to do otherwise. 
 Thus is encouraged a spirit of devotion 
 to a common cause, and a forgetfulness 
 of self, that are most wholesome ele- 
 ments in the matured character. 
 
 It indirectly inculcates courtesy and 
 
FOR WOMEN. 19 
 
 respect for the feelings of others ; no 
 one member of the group may be al- 
 lowed to assert herself unpleasantly 
 against the others, although, as express- 
 ing group feeling and opinion, she may 
 be alarmingly frank and direct in re- 
 proof and criticism. In general it dis- 
 countenances sham, and respects and 
 admires the genuine and real ; but, since 
 it is human, it is not always infallible 
 in detecting the one and the other. It 
 tends to elevate the standard of appear- 
 ance, behavior, and manner, from the 
 fact that it lays down as a type, not the 
 traits actually shown in its members, 
 but those that it likes and fancies. The 
 crowd, as a crowd, is quick to condemn 
 in any one of its members an act, a 
 manner, a way of speech, that any other 
 member, singly, might be not at all 
 
20 COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 disinclined to manifest in her own per- 
 son. 
 
 The strong character will develop a 
 greater and more assured strength in its 
 contact with the college-group, since it 
 must justify its own worthiness to exist 
 at every step of the way ; the weak char- 
 acter will find itself benefited by its en- 
 deavor to conform to the college-type, 
 which is somewhat above the level of 
 the average girl, since it expresses, not 
 the sum of actual traits and characters 
 of the individuals making up the group, 
 but the group-ideal. 
 
 While the group is thus powerful in 
 its influence over the individual member, 
 it is itself subject to influence. The 
 leading traits above indicated charac- 
 terize it pretty constantly, because the 
 college-group, wherever and however sit- 
 
FOR WOMEN. 21 
 
 uated, is a group of the young ; yet in 
 the details of its character it is modi- 
 fied by the character of its elements and 
 the nature of its surroundings. Each 
 separate college-group has its own dis- 
 tinctive personal traits, due to its own 
 peculiar position and circumstances. 
 The personality of the Western college- 
 group differs from that of the Eastern, 
 that of the Northern from that of the 
 Southern ; its physiognomy is different 
 in the coeducational college from what 
 it is in the college for women only. The 
 college-group in the town will be more 
 careful of the small proprieties of life 
 than the college-group in the country ; 
 the college-group housed in dormitories 
 will exercise more control over its mem- 
 bers than the college-group that is dis- 
 persed every night. 
 
22 COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 The individual member, although un- 
 der the sway of the group, influences it 
 in turn. If one could decide what char- 
 acteristics or qualities make the leader 
 in the college-group, one could perhaps 
 penetrate the secret of the demagogue, 
 the popular orator, or the "magnetic" 
 politician. The "popular girl" often 
 has much to do in giving the last forma- 
 tive touches to the distinctive social type 
 dominant in the college at the moment ; 
 but what is it that makes her the " popu- 
 lar girl ? " She will naturally, to greater 
 or less extent, express in her own person 
 that unformulated ideal of the group, 
 the characteristics of which we have just 
 been trying to outline ; but added to this 
 is some trick of personality, some idio- 
 syncrasy, that catches the group fancy, 
 and sets them all to admiring, imitating, 
 
FOR WOMEN. 23 
 
 and following. Not often, but occasion- 
 ally, the group is influenced, not through 
 its taste and feelings, but through its 
 reason, by some member in it of strong 
 mind and determination. In general, 
 however, the group can be led by its 
 member but a very little way, and that 
 only by one that has already a strong 
 hold on its feelings and preferences. 
 
 Another influence that goes to mould 
 the group-character is the governing 
 body of the college, and this is a power- 
 ful one ; for it is theirs to determine the 
 outer conditions in which the group is 
 to work, and it is also theirs to come 
 even more closely into relation with the 
 group-life. By "governing body" is 
 not meant necessarily the legally consti- 
 tuted and nominal guides and directors 
 of the institution, but the real centre of 
 
24 COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 power, whether board of trustees, com- 
 mittee of the faculty, dean of a school, 
 or president, — the source from which 
 comes all actual direction of college af- 
 fairs, and to which must be referred all 
 real responsibility for their management. 
 They have it largely in their power to 
 give the tone, the form, and the direction 
 to the college-spirit, and thus to enter 
 into one of the strongest influences in the 
 college. They can to a great extent de- 
 termine whether the college-ideal shall 
 be comparatively low or comparatively 
 high, whether the natural proneness of 
 the young group to the outward and vis- 
 ible shall be encouraged to its highest 
 pitch, whether its natural taste for rite 
 and ceremony and the proprieties shall 
 altogether outweigh its equally natural 
 feeling for the real and true and genu- 
 
FOR WOMEN. 25 
 
 ine beneath all outward forms. Their 
 influence upon the student as an indi- 
 vidual may be also great. They can 
 set the seal of approval upon a me- 
 chanical scholarship, a tricky method, 
 and a material success, or upon the liv- 
 ing power of the mind, the straightest 
 integrity in all dealings, and a success 
 that cannot be measured by "marks," 
 "grades," or fellowships. 
 
 In summing up the results of the col- 
 lege discipline, we may say that we look 
 to the college to give its students, by 
 direct teaching, some command of fact 
 and some idea of a method. It teaches 
 indirectly a more or less perfect code of 
 morals and manners, different from that 
 taught in the community in some re- 
 spects, and in some respects better and 
 higher. 
 
26 COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 There is much besides that the college 
 does not and cannot do, that is, never- 
 theless, expected of it. A common de- 
 mand is, that the college shall implant 
 by direct teaching what it now teaches 
 indirectly. Proposals have been made 
 from time to time that the colleges should 
 establish chairs of manners, chairs of 
 moral advice, chairs of preparation for 
 wifehood and motherhood, chairs of in- 
 struction in dress, in polite letter-writing, 
 and so on. The demand is unreason- 
 able, since human nature will never be 
 taught those things in that way. Man- 
 ners and morals are not matters of defi- 
 nition and command, but of assimilation 
 and imitation. 
 
 One of our unfounded expectations 
 from the wide diffusion of college train- 
 ing is of a great and general increase in 
 
FOR WOMEN. 27 
 
 originative mental power. Under the 
 proper discipline any given individual 
 will find himself acquiring more com- 
 plete possession and use of the powers 
 with which nature endowed him at birth ; 
 but experience seems to show that no 
 amount of training can add to that ori- 
 ginal stock. It is a common complaint 
 that with the increase in attendance at 
 our woman's colleges, there is no cor- 
 responding increase in original mental 
 product. The same may be said of the 
 college for men. Mankind seems to be 
 pretty constantly divided into the rela- 
 tively small class of the inventive-minded, 
 the relatively great class of the adoptive- 
 or imitative-minded, while below both is 
 a deficient class, which must always be 
 smaller than the two upper classes if so- 
 ciety is to hold together, which will not 
 
28 COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 or cannot either imitate or invent. It is 
 the first class that produces great and 
 original work for the delight and instruc- 
 tion of mankind ; and unfortunately its 
 limits are so narrow that any consider- 
 able extension of educational opportu- 
 nities is sure to pass far beyond them. 
 It is the inevitable result, then, that 
 original production falls proportionately 
 behind the spread of education. The 
 good, however, done by education is 
 none the less real. The college may 
 never make genius out of mediocrity; 
 but it is no small nor worthless achieve- 
 ment to enable mediocrity to appreciate 
 and make use of the fruits of genius. 
 
 Another unfounded expectation is, that 
 the college can turn out a uniform pro- 
 duct in its graduates, notwithstanding 
 the differences and deficiencies in home 
 
FOR WOMEN. 29 
 
 and school training. The college grad- 
 uate is supposed by the community to 
 be possessed of a definite amount of 
 learning and culture by the mere fact of 
 passing four years under college train- 
 ing. The college graduate is in reality 
 the product of two sets of forces, — the 
 character and acquirements she comes 
 to the college with on the one hand, and 
 the influences of the college-life on the 
 other : each is equally determinate of 
 the product. If habits of indolence, 
 selfishness, intolerance, and narrowness 
 of view have been encouraged at home, 
 the influences of college-life have just 
 so much the more to contend against; 
 if the home and the immediate sur- 
 roundings have failed to give the stu- 
 dent the beginnings of acquaintance 
 with the fine, the beautiful, and the 
 
30 COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 liberal in life, the college has just so 
 much the more to supply. If the stu- 
 dent comes ill-trained and untrained 
 from the preparatory school, other con- 
 ditions being equal, the college cannot 
 do so much for her as for her well-trained 
 classmate. 
 
 Great as the influence of the college 
 is, it cannot do everything. It cannot, 
 apparently, add to the brain capital of 
 the individual ; it can only help to a 
 better use of it. It cannot supply ev- 
 erything left unprovided by home and 
 school ; it can only begin where they 
 leave off, and go as far as time will al- 
 low it in erecting its structure. It can- 
 not create character out and out by rule 
 and precept ; it can only form and guide 
 it by spirit and example. 
 
FOR WOMEN. 31 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE PREPARATION. 
 
 AS the mental and moral outfit a stu- 
 -t~V- dent possesses when she enters 
 the college has so much to do with her 
 after success there, it will be found as 
 desirable to make provision for suitable 
 preparatory training as to secure for the 
 student the advantages and opportuni- 
 ties of the college itself. A fruitful sub- 
 ject of discussion is the outer form and 
 method of that preparation, — how many 
 subjects shall be covered in the prepar- 
 atory school; how much time shall be 
 given to each, and in what relative pro- 
 portion ; what may the colleges properly 
 require in their entrance examinations ; 
 
32 COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 what steps should be taken toward uni- 
 formity of standard in entrance require- 
 ment? While we are waiting, however, 
 for the well-organized and perfected ed- 
 ucational system that is hoped for as 
 the result of the researches and labors 
 of our professional educators, may not 
 something be done, under actually ex- 
 isting conditions of college and school 
 machinery, toward making the prepara- 
 tion for college not only effective for the 
 purpose it is meant to serve, but a nat- 
 ural and pleasant process for the student 
 who undertakes it ? 
 
 In this work both home and school 
 may find something to do, and home 
 and school must act in harmony in their 
 task. Parents in our country are in- 
 clined to think that they, personally, 
 can do little toward their children's edu- 
 
FOR WOMEN. 33 
 
 cation. They are, in many cases, try- 
 ing to secure for their children much 
 more of educational advantage than they 
 themselves have enjoyed ; and so, in the 
 feeling of helplessness that arises as the 
 child gets farther and farther away from 
 them in the path of learning, they turn 
 all matters of its education over to the 
 paid teacher, especially trained for the 
 task, as the only possible source of in- 
 struction. 
 
 Even to the teacher, however, parents 
 do not grant full power and control in 
 those matters. A common preposses- 
 sion of the parent is that the child is 
 of a rare and unusual nature, which is 
 manifested either in a supposed native 
 brilliancy that is more than a match 
 even for the teacher's powers, or in a 
 sensitive temperament so peculiar in its 
 
34 COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 gifts that the teacher does not under- 
 stand it or sympathize with it. There 
 is also an impression afloat that the 
 play of mind is an exhausting and dan- 
 gerous process in itself, which will con- 
 sume the unfortunate victim to the habit 
 like a raging fire, if allowed to gain full 
 headway. 
 
 The result of all this is, that the pre- 
 paratory teacher too often finds that he 
 has to deal with a child untaught and 
 undisciplined at home, who feels above 
 the necessity of discipline at all, who is 
 taken out of school early and sent back 
 late, who is excused on frequent occa- 
 sions for health's sake, and, when at 
 home, is enticed from lessons at every 
 opportunity. So thoughtless, indeed, 
 and so apparently lacking in all notion 
 of what is useful and proper in the 
 
FOR WOMEN. 35 
 
 school discipline, is the average parent, 
 that the teacher dreads the idea of co- 
 operation, and asks only to be let alone 
 in his work. If, however, parents could 
 and would co-operate with the teacher 
 properly, the results would be far be- 
 yond what are generally secured now. 
 Parents can be of assistance in the 
 process of the child's education, though 
 they may know little or nothing of the 
 technical detail of its studies. In the 
 first place, the parent is responsible for 
 the child's character, a factor that en- 
 ters largely even into purely intellec- 
 tual progress. It will make a great dif- 
 ference with the child's advancement in 
 the school, as well as in life in general, 
 whether it has or has not been taught 
 a regard for duty and discipline, and a 
 respect for the opinions of those who 
 
2,6 COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 are older, and know more than it does. 
 The parent, and especially the mother, 
 can establish habits of order, of obedi- 
 ence, and of truthfulness ; she can teach 
 a disregard of petty aches and pains 
 that will tend to build up in the child a 
 sturdy manliness or womanliness ; she 
 can turn the child's mind away from it- 
 self as the chief centre of interest, — the 
 first requisite, perhaps, to a true mental 
 and moral growth. The child may learn 
 from her that effort is the natural con- 
 dition of life ; that mental effort is no 
 abnormal and dangerous process, but a 
 normal and healthful one, and that noth- 
 ing really good may be expected without 
 effort, either mental or physical. None 
 of these lessons may be left entirely to 
 be taught by paid teachers ; the task is 
 beyond their power and province to ac- 
 complish. 
 
FOR WOMEN. 37 
 
 Any parent of average common-sense 
 and good intention, whether " well edu- 
 cated " in the conventional sense or 
 not, can do much even for the strictly 
 intellectual development of the child. 
 The mother is with the child through 
 those early years when mind and mus- 
 cle, all a-tingle with expanding power, 
 reach out on every side in very wanton- 
 ness of unspent energy, trying, expe- 
 riencing, and co-ordinating, until the 
 random play of mental and physical 
 activity is reduced to the orderly, pur- 
 poseful system of thought and expres- 
 sion. The habits of mental action that 
 are formed during this process show 
 their influence for good or evil through- 
 out life. It is consequently a most 
 important function that the mother has 
 to perform, coming before the work of 
 
38 COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 the teacher in point of time, and of 
 relative value also, — to guide and di- 
 rect this process so that it may have 
 its best effect. The important matter 
 in this guidance is to make the child's 
 mind do its own work, and thus gain 
 a strength and vigor that the supported 
 mind, like the bandaged muscle, never 
 can acquire. 
 
 After the child has learned to talk, a 
 great part of this tentative and plan- 
 less mental activity shows itself in the 
 form of asking innumerable questions. 
 " What is this ? " " What is that for ? " 
 " What makes this do so ? " are often- 
 repeated queries by means of which 
 the child tries to adjust itself to a new 
 and untried world. If not properly con- 
 trolled, however, this mode of activity 
 becomes a more random and aimless 
 
FOR WOMEN. 39 
 
 play of mind than it began, degenerat- 
 ing into a well-known affliction that we 
 may call the " question habit ; " which, 
 far from being the sign of exceptional 
 mental activity and health parents usu- 
 ally imagine it, is in reality a symptom 
 of disease, — a species of mental influ- 
 enza, betokening a mind too flabby and 
 nerveless to set up the proper reactions 
 within itself. 
 
 While the easy-going or over-busy 
 parent turns the little questioner off 
 with flimsy or evasive answers, or no 
 answers at all, the conscientious parent 
 thinks his or her whole duty is done 
 when the child's questions are, each one, 
 answered faithfully, seriously, and as 
 fully as the child's comprehension will 
 permit. This is not, however, the full 
 extent of the parent's duty. Not merely 
 
40 COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 the answers to the questions, but the 
 questions themselves, should be care- 
 fully attended to. No foolish question 
 should be allowed ; no question that the 
 child, with the aid of what it knows 
 already, should be able to answer for it- 
 self ; none without a purpose beyond the 
 joy of hearing its own tongue clatter. 
 
 The child thus trained in its ques- 
 tionings, as well as instructed in the 
 answers given to them, comes very soon 
 to learn the difference between the rea- 
 sonable and the unreasonable, the rele- 
 vant and the irrelevant, the important 
 and the trivial ; it learns to value what 
 is told to it once, and will stow away 
 carefully for future use any bit of in- 
 formation that it gets, if there is a fairly 
 clear certainty that that information will 
 not be freely supplied again the next 
 
FOR WOMEN. 41 
 
 time an idle fancy suggests, but will 
 not fully picture the matter in question. 
 The child learns also to apply what it 
 does know in matters that it does not 
 know fully, when it is forbidden to 
 ask for help until it has worked at the 
 problem in earnest with the materials 
 already at hand. 
 
 In this way the child learns to carry 
 on a true process of thought, which is 
 not the disconnected flow of casually 
 suggested mental images that frequently 
 passes for thought even in the adult 
 mind, but is the orderly working out of 
 a power of making distinctions between 
 things, of connecting them one to an- 
 other, and of applying what one has 
 learned about one set of things to an- 
 other set, that makes its possessor really 
 know the world, and how to use it. 
 
42 COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 The cultivation of this power of 
 thought is one of the greatest aids the 
 parent can render the teacher in the 
 work of college preparation ; for when 
 this is secured, the rest will come with- 
 out difficulty, and as a matter of course. 
 It is unfortunately the fact that the 
 average membership of our schools is 
 made up of girls and boys who have 
 not been taught at home or anywhere 
 else really to think. A girl of this 
 type will read her Latin and Greek 
 texts without one glimmering of a 
 notion that they are the expression of 
 some fellow-being's actual thoughts 
 about actual things ; she will feel no 
 compunction in slaying a man in one 
 line only to represent him as begin- 
 ning a speech in the next, or in mak- 
 ing the victorious general turn in head- 
 
FOR WOMEN 43 
 
 long flight over the bridge that has just 
 been razed to its foundations. Under 
 such conditions, is it any wonder that 
 college-preparatory teaching is often 
 such an ungrateful and exhausting task ? 
 As the child grows older, and be- 
 gins its school-life, the parent may 
 do much to help the teacher by con- 
 tinuing the general discipline of the 
 thinking powers already begun in ear- 
 lier years. To say that parents should 
 keep up an active intellectual life in 
 the home may have a formidable sound, 
 as implying that parents must spend 
 their time in discussing deep prob- 
 lems of philosophy, criticising great 
 works of art and literature, and deliv- 
 ering opinions upon new developments 
 in science ; it need simply mean this, 
 — that parents should think over and 
 
44 COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 discuss " in the n,earmg of • their chil- 
 dren, and with them, matters of broader 
 interest than mere personal gossip. 
 The way the common-sense business 
 man, or the practical woman, takes up 
 a concrete case, looks over the cir- 
 cumstances, considers the details, re- 
 gards all the aspects and bearings of 
 it, is a valuable teaching in itself for 
 the child, who learns by it that not all 
 the problems are within book-covers, 
 and that hard thinking may be em- 
 ployed on matters outside of school 
 as well as in it. What is set down 
 in books was got in the first place by 
 some such process of talking over and 
 thinking over things as is gone through 
 in every-day life, and it is most useful 
 to the child to get an inkling of the fact. 
 Parents should also pay some atten- 
 
FOR WOMEN. 45 
 
 tion to the child's habits of reading. 
 It is usually thought quite remarkable 
 and wonderful if the child spends its 
 time in reading at all. The parent 
 perhaps, as well as the child, should 
 be taught to know that not all wisdom 
 is contained in books, and that not all 
 that is in the books is wisdom. "The 
 child is so fond of reading ! " audibly 
 whispers the proud mother when the 
 visitor comes in and finds the child 
 immersed in the volume of fairy-tales. 
 Soon the child, who has been follow- 
 ing simply and unconsciously the nat- 
 ural impulse of childhood for the 
 entertainment afforded by a story, be- 
 comes puffed up with the conscious- 
 ness of unusual merit and distinction 
 in reading any sort of a book in any 
 sort of a way. 
 
46 COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 As far as any real advantage to mind 
 and thought is concerned, much of the 
 reading done by children might bet- 
 ter be omitted altogether. Particularly 
 pernicious is the enervating and taste- 
 less pap usually offered to children 
 under the name of "juvenile litera- 
 ture," which, with its commonplace 
 treatment of commonplace themes, its 
 presentation of the child to itself as a 
 hero, its preoccupation with the imma- 
 ture stage of life and thought, deals 
 with the child on its own level merely, 
 ill exercising the child's mind in real 
 power of thought, and ill preparing 
 it for maturity. The reading given to 
 children should always be of a quality 
 sufficiently high to afford the adult 
 mind entertainment or nourishment. 
 There need be no fear that such read- 
 
FOR WOMEN. 47 
 
 ing will be beyond the child's compre- 
 hension. The normal child is far keener 
 to appreciate and understand the best 
 in literature than is commonly sup- 
 posed, and should have it as a neces- 
 sary part of training. A background of 
 good literature, absorbed at home not 
 as a task but as a spontaneously sought 
 pleasure, gives that touch of distinction, 
 that breadth and ease, that denote cul- 
 ture, and that are painfully lacking in 
 the average student. 
 
 The most unlearned parent may co- 
 operate with the work of the teacher by 
 regulating the home-life so that the girl 
 preparing for college may have fixed 
 and certain periods of time to devote to 
 her work, during which she is no more 
 to be called upon for the performance 
 of social and domestic duties than if she 
 
48 COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 were living somewhere else. It is too 
 commonly the idea that the daughter of 
 the family is family property; and any 
 seclusion of herself is looked upon as a 
 selfish withdrawal from the family life. 
 If, however, the girl is going to college, 
 the time to be spent in preparation must 
 be counted as part of the cost. Let the 
 girl, then, be quite undisturbed in her 
 hours of work, and let her be expected 
 and required to put forth real effort dur- 
 ing them. Outside of these hours the 
 parent must see that the daughter has 
 sufficient out-of-door exercise to keep 
 her body in good working condition, 
 and sufficient social life and amusement 
 of a simple sort to give her some relax- 
 ation and elasticity of mind. 
 
 If the mother only thinks so, she may 
 follow the girl even more closely in her 
 
FOR WOMEN. 49 
 
 school progress. If she will cast aside 
 the old superstition that restricts the 
 period of learning to youth, she may 
 acquire some knowledge of the techni- 
 cal detail of what her daughter is study- 
 ing, and may help her, even if only by 
 trying to learn something from her. 
 There is no better way to learn a thing 
 one's self than by trying to teach it to 
 another ; and the girl's effort to tell 
 what she is doing, and to explain what 
 she knows, will be a great help to her 
 in her own effort to know it. 
 
 Any parent may find a way to assist 
 in her daughter's advancement by com- 
 ing into sympathetic personal relations 
 with the teacher. The mother should 
 be acquainted with those who teach her 
 daughter, and should know something 
 of their methods and motives. Where 
 
50 COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 these are good, she may help through 
 her comprehension of them, by keeping 
 them present before her daughter's 
 mind ; where these are bad or indiffer- 
 ent (and where she cannot change con- 
 ditions for the better) she may skilfully 
 counteract them by corrections and ad- 
 ditions of her own, to be made, however, 
 without lowering the teacher in the stu- 
 dent's eyes any more than regard for 
 obvious truth and justice warrants. 
 
 A girl properly helped and disciplined 
 at home will, if of average ability, make 
 a fairly good college preparation in 
 almost any school, and under almost 
 any teacher. Unfortunately, thoroughly 
 good home-training is rare ; and even 
 if it were not, it is still desirable that 
 thoroughly good teaching at school 
 should supplement it. This is not to 
 
FOR WOMEN. 51 
 
 be found exclusively in large and well- 
 advertised schools, under elaborately de- 
 vised methods, with all the parapher- 
 nalia of the new science of pedagogy, 
 nor is it invariably to be found under 
 such conditions. It depends, as it al- 
 ways has depended, and always will 
 depend, on the native mental force of 
 the teacher, who will be able to use a 
 method to advantage if there is one, and 
 to invent one if none existed before. 
 No amount of technical acquirement 
 possessed by the teacher, and no de- 
 gree of mechanical correspondence to a 
 standard, can take the place of this ori- 
 ginal power of mind. 
 
 The teaching staff in the successful 
 preparatory school must, then, be made 
 up of persons considerable for real men- 
 tal ability ; and to secure such persons, 
 
52 COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 adequate salaries must be paid. There 
 is no escape from the fact that educa- 
 tion, like almost all other good things, 
 is expensive. It involves expenditure of 
 money and effort on the part of the par- 
 ent, of time and effort on the part of the 
 teacher. In order that persons of 
 the high grade of ability desirable in 
 the teacher should be induced to occupy 
 that position, they should be offered at 
 least as much as they might expect to 
 earn, with their intellectual capital, in 
 other and perhaps less exhausting fields. 
 Day by day the opportunities of prof- 
 itable employment for the educated man 
 and the educated woman are widening ; 
 day by day the expense of preparing for 
 the teacher's profession grows greater, 
 with the daily growth of requirement for 
 that profession. The standard of re- 
 
FOR WOMEN. 53 
 
 ward for the teacher must be raised cor- 
 respondingly, unless we want the best 
 minds to leave that most important post 
 to the unenterprising and incompetent, 
 who feel that they would be failures at 
 anything else. 
 
 The harm that the second-rate pre- 
 paratory teacher can do is great. Such 
 a teacher acts under the idea, and con- 
 veys it in turn to the pupil, that the 
 aim of the preparatory discipline is to 
 give a training in a difficult game, to be 
 played later with the college examiner, 
 in which the winner is the one who se- 
 cures for his side the highest number 
 of the ten "tricks" or questions set in 
 the examination paper. Teaching, with 
 such a person, means drill in the rules 
 of the game by means of papers set 
 by former examiners, and study means 
 
54 COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 the cramming of special sets of facts 
 and catches that are likely to win extra 
 points for the student in the game. 
 This devouring of great masses of ma- 
 terial at top speed, under feverish anxi- 
 ety to cram down and keep in as much 
 as possible, is as far as can be from the 
 true method and purpose of education, 
 and gives a poor preliminary notion of 
 the college spirit and influence. 
 
 The first-rate teacher, on the other 
 hand, tries primarily to train the pow- 
 ers, letting the acquirements, to some 
 extent, take care of themselves. In 
 carrying out this general plan, he will- 
 not hesitate to spend what may appear 
 at first glance too long a time over 
 points that especially puzzle or espe- 
 cially interest the pupil. One problem 
 worked out thoroughly in all its bear- 
 
FOR WOMEN. 55 
 
 ings, one question of interest followed 
 out in all its applications and variations, 
 is a valuable first lesson in command of 
 thought and in original research, that 
 will make the solution of future prob- 
 lems, and the investigation of future 
 cases, easy and natural to the student, 
 as the superficial and mechanical cover- 
 ing of dozens of topics could not do. 
 Where even one thing has been well 
 and thoroughly thought out, an ease is 
 gained in dealing with all subsequent 
 matters that more than makes up for 
 the apparent delay. 
 
 A pupil taught in this way, and of 
 average ability, need not be afraid of 
 any entrance examination paper ever 
 set, even when she has not made spe- 
 cial preparation for it. In her answers 
 to the questions asked she cannot help 
 
56 COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 showing intelligence, even if she fail 
 in some small points ; and it is intelli- 
 gence, above all, that the college is try- 
 ing to test, and welcomes, when found, 
 with great rejoicing. 
 
 It may be suggested, that to this gen- 
 eral preparation, a little good, hard 
 cramming may be added, with no inju- 
 rious results whatever. The mischief 
 arises when cramming is the only form 
 of preparation. On many occasions in 
 life, there is a call for the exercise of 
 just this " cramming " faculty, — the 
 power to take into the mind, with rapid- 
 ity and certainty, large masses of detail 
 for temporary and special use. Mere 
 memory is a plodding beast of burden 
 indeed, but under the direction of in- 
 telligence, it has its valuable uses ; and 
 the growing modern tendency to ignore 
 
FOR WOMEN. 57 
 
 memory and its function will, if per- 
 sisted in, deprive the actively working 
 mind of one of its best aids. 
 
 In preparatory work, hurry is a great 
 source of fatigue and discouragement. 
 With the innocent egotism of youth, the 
 average school-girl is convinced that 
 life in its real sense is over at twenty- 
 five, and that the unfortunate beings 
 who have passed that period are merely 
 existing because they have to. How 
 she laughs at the bare-faced pretence 
 that the single woman of thirty-five may 
 have her friends, her admirers even, 
 and a sense of the tide of life as full 
 and exhilarating as she felt it at eigh- 
 teen. And yet modern conditions are 
 slowly moving forward the barrier be- 
 tween youth and age. Wider and more 
 complicated activities demand a longer 
 
58 COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 period of preparation before engaging 
 in them, and a continued process of 
 adjustment and readjustment, which 
 means continued learning, in carrying 
 them on. The modern novel reflects 
 this changing state of things ; the old- 
 time heroine of bewitching sixteen has 
 grown into fascinating thirty, or even 
 forty. But the school-girl has not come 
 to realize this condition of affairs as 
 yet, and tries with all her energy to 
 have the school-days, and even the 
 much-desired college days, over before 
 the period of what she looks upon as 
 real life ends. 
 
 The girl of fifteen or sixteen consid- 
 ers much more carefully the spending 
 of an extra year or so on a task or in a 
 way of life than she will ten years later. 
 To enter college at nineteen when one 
 
FOR WOMEN. 59 
 
 could crowd in at eighteen seems to 
 her an inexcusable waste of precious 
 time and a real calamity. The aver- 
 age mother is only too prone to fall 
 in with these ideas, and wish to shorten 
 the years devoted to study, even when 
 she does not provide at home for the 
 best and most effective use of those 
 she is willing to allow. Even what she 
 takes out of the middle of the school- 
 time she is not ready to add on to the 
 end. Some teachers, too, lend them- 
 selves to the carrying out of these 
 plans, and, giving themselves up to the 
 dominant thought of hurry, in the spirit 
 of the race-track, fit their pupils, like 
 trotters, to make the fastest time on 
 record. 
 
 Nothing could be worse for the stu- 
 dent. The mind is like the limb the 
 
60 COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 athlete is trying to develop, — it may 
 be provided with all the nourishment 
 you please, it may be exercised with 
 daily diligence ; but if food and exer- 
 cise are supplied faster than nature 
 can make use of them in her leisurely 
 processes of growth, the one will be 
 merely a clog, the other a weariness to 
 it. 
 
 The student who is rushed through 
 her college preparation at top speed 
 may succeed in getting into college well 
 enough; but once in, she is likely to 
 find herself with a mind too fatigued 
 and inelastic to leap as it should to its 
 task with the fresh and spontaneous 
 interest that attaches and holds to it- 
 self all that belongs to it. She will 
 also be lacking, probably, in the gen- 
 eral culture so important as a prepara- 
 
FOR WOMEN. 6l 
 
 tion for the best influences of college 
 life, — a culture that can be obtained 
 only by a little leisure from a constant 
 grind of school-tasks to give opportu- 
 nity for some familiarity with the best 
 in literature, art, and music. 
 
 Hurrying through the preparatory 
 school in this way, the student is usu- 
 ally able to cover the mechanical re- 
 quirements for entrance to college some 
 little time before general intelligence 
 and character are mature enough to 
 allow her to make the best use of col- 
 lege advantages. She may, for ex- 
 ample, be able to analyze every word 
 and sentence in her Greek and Latin 
 texts, and yet be totally unfit, from 
 lack of maturity, to learn what Greek 
 and Roman thought really meant, as 
 the college tries to teach it to her. It 
 
62 COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 seems a pity to lose the best good of 
 those valuable years of college disci- 
 pline just by over-haste in beginning 
 them ! 
 
 Some maturity of character as well 
 is desirable in the pupil who is to be 
 sent away from the safeguards of home. 
 It is a bad thing for the student, and 
 a desperately bad thing for the college 
 and its influence, that she should be 
 turned loose there with the natural 
 impulses of youth untrained and un- 
 repressed. Perhaps even before the 
 necessity of intellectual maturity for 
 the girl leaving home for the college 
 comes the necessity of firmly grounded 
 habits of self-control, caution, and self- 
 respect. 
 
 In conclusion we may say, that while 
 college preparation should be made a 
 
FOR WOMEN. 63 
 
 natural process, it never can be made 
 an entirely easy one. The student 
 must work, and work hard. The " read- 
 ing without tears" of the kindergarten 
 will not altogether accomplish the re- 
 sult. But the effort itself, if made 
 under the right guidance and in the 
 right spirit, becomes, like the strong 
 play of the athlete's muscle, a pleasure 
 greater than the dawdler and the idler 
 can ever know. 
 
64 COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 CHOOSING A COLLEGE. 
 
 A MO ST fascinating and at the same 
 time bewildering occupation is 
 the study of college catalogues. This 
 is a study in which the girl is apt to be 
 a greater adept than her parents. She 
 can tell you without faltering just what 
 books of Vergil, Homer, and Cicero 
 each college requires for admission, just 
 what the " group-system " is, and what 
 is the scope of "electives." The par- 
 ent is likely to become so puzzled over 
 the intricacies of the matter as to turn 
 it over entirely to the daughter, leaving 
 her to decide where she shall spend 
 four of the most important and inter- 
 esting years of her life. 
 
FOR WOMEN. 65 
 
 But the parent should know, distinctly 
 and definitely, what sort of a place the 
 daughter is going to ; and this knowl- 
 edge must be extracted not only from 
 the college programme, but from all 
 possible sources besides. The college 
 programme contains those bare items of 
 information about the college that are 
 to be expressed in definite facts and 
 figures, and something may be learned 
 from these, even if they are taken sep- 
 arately, just as they stand, as the ordi- 
 nary reader would take them ; but much 
 more is to be learned by reading one 
 statement in the light of another, by 
 combining and relating to one another 
 all the conditions described, until one 
 is able to look behind the nominal offer 
 made by the college to the real advan- 
 tage given. 
 
66 COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 From the programme the parent may 
 learn whether the standard of entrance 
 is high or low. It may be found that 
 the college sets its standard apparently 
 high in requiring examinations for en- 
 trance in advanced subjects, and in 
 many of them ; it may, on the other 
 hand, be found that although the sub- 
 jects themselves are advanced, the 
 ground to be covered in each is a small 
 proportion of the whole. Again, the 
 subjects required may be advanced, and 
 the amount to be taken in them may 
 be considerable, and yet the privilege of 
 entering by certificate and under condi- 
 tions may be so liberally offered by the 
 college as to show that its real standard 
 of entrance is lower than it appears to 
 be. 
 
 What the student is to receive by 
 
FOR WOMEN. 67 
 
 direct instruction is laid down in the 
 printed course of study, and more or 
 less information is given there about 
 the instructors and their methods. 
 Here, too, much more may be learned 
 by combining the statements made than 
 by considering each one singly. The 
 college may propose, for example, to 
 give instruction in a certain great de- 
 partment of knowledge, while the defi- 
 nite courses marked out to be given in 
 it may be so few in number, may cover 
 so little of the subject, and may occupy 
 so little time, that the real opportunities 
 offered for study in that general direc- 
 tion may be small indeed. Again, am- 
 ple courses of study may be laid out, 
 covering nominally the whole field of 
 one great subject, while a reference to 
 the faculty-list may show that only one 
 
68 COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 person is set to conduct a broad and 
 diversified work that would require a 
 large staff of instructors for its accom- 
 plishment. 
 
 Sometimes it will be found that one 
 person is carrying on work in two de- 
 partments, a tolerably good indication 
 that neither the college nor the in- 
 structor understands what modern spe- 
 cialization means ; or if the college and 
 the instructor do understand it, they are 
 not able to live up to its requirements. 
 Again, it may be found that a crowded 
 faculty-list, giving several or many work- 
 ers in a single subject, will be overbal- 
 anced by a still more crowded student- 
 list. In such a case, classes are likely 
 to be too large to receive proper care 
 and instruction. 
 
 Perhaps the college is connected with 
 
FOR WOMEN. 69 
 
 a preparatory school. It must then be 
 considered whether a nominally large 
 teaching-force in the college is not 
 obliged to employ so much of its time in 
 the work of the school that the strictly 
 collegiate work is insufficiently provided 
 for. The student-list of the associated 
 school, too, may be found to be so large 
 in comparison with the membership of 
 the college, that true collegiate life and 
 spirit cannot exist. 
 
 Study of the catalogue will usually re- 
 veal something of the material resources 
 of the college. To be successful in 
 keeping up with the advance of modern 
 thought, the modern college must have 
 a generous equipment ; it must have 
 suitable and substantial buildings in 
 which to house its students without 
 over-crowding and danger to health ; it 
 
JO COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 must provide the library, the observa- 
 tory, the laboratories, the ample store 
 of apparatus, and the other materials 
 necessary to enable the student to gain 
 that familiarity with real things, in their 
 changes and qualities, that gives sub- 
 stance and actuality to the bare outlines 
 of the text-book and the lecture. 
 
 It is well to look carefully into such 
 information as is given in the college 
 programme about its instructors. We 
 may learn from this more or less about 
 their previous training and experience ; 
 whether they hold college degrees or 
 not, and of what grade ; whether the 
 degrees are bestowed as honorary titles 
 by small and insignificant institutions, 
 or as the reward of actual work done 
 in some high-class university, either here 
 or abroad. We may perhaps learn 
 
FOR WOMEN. 71 
 
 whether the names on the faculty-list 
 are distinguished in any way. Admit- 
 ting that the original discoverer, the 
 brilliant writer, the strong mover in so- 
 cial affairs, may not necessarily be the 
 best or most useful teacher, we have yet 
 no warrant for supposing, conversely, 
 that the great mass of the unknown will 
 teach the better for their obscurity. It 
 is a sign of life in the college, and 
 promises well for its work with the stu- 
 dent, that it has within its walls men 
 and women of sufficient power to have 
 had influence in the world of thought 
 outside the little circle of the single 
 college or university. Such persons as 
 these, whether " good teachers " in the 
 technical and professional sense or not, 
 at least give tone to the college, and set 
 a standard of achievement that is good 
 to have before the student. 
 
72 COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 When the resources of the catalogue 
 are exhausted, perhaps the most impor- 
 tant part of the work still remains to be 
 done ; that is, personal inspection of 
 the college, and personal contact with 
 the influences there. The innocent 
 embellishment in description and por- 
 traiture of buildings and general outer 
 conditions, so natural and so excusable 
 in the prospectus, even that of a col- 
 lege, must be corrected by actual view 
 of the place itself. 
 
 It must be known definitely and accu- 
 rately that the physical basis of life in 
 the college is thoroughly provided for ; 
 since, if this basis is not sound and 
 firm, the mental structure will be totter- 
 ing and insecure. Much has been said 
 against the higher education for women, 
 on the ground that the mental labor 
 
FOR WOMEN. 73 
 
 involved was too severe a strain upon 
 the physical organization. Results of 
 careful investigation show, that in cases 
 of invalidism arising during and after 
 college-life, the actual exertion of study 
 was responsible for little, almost none, 
 of the mischief. The student who is 
 well housed, well provided with means 
 of exercise, and, above all, well fed, 
 need not be afraid, unless in excep- 
 tional cases, of bringing discredit to the 
 higher education of women by break- 
 ing down in the middle of her college 
 course. 
 
 The conditions of dormitory life 
 should be carefully looked into. The 
 old notion that girls could be crowded 
 together in groups of from two to five 
 in one sleeping-room is now very gen- 
 erally given up. Provision is made in 
 
74 COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 our best women's colleges that each stu- 
 dent shall have a bed to herself, and in 
 many places she is the sole occupant of 
 her bedroom. The ideal state of things 
 is where the student has a bedroom and 
 study for herself ; but she should at 
 least have the privacy of a bedroom as 
 a necessary condition of real rest and 
 repair of nerve-power. 
 
 It is also desirable that the student's 
 room should be heated by an open fire, 
 and lighted, during part of the day at 
 least, by the direct rays of the sun. 
 The influence of these two elements in 
 keeping up the general fund of health 
 and vitality is estimated far under its 
 real importance, because its working is 
 gradual, and its results a generally dif- 
 fused condition of well-being rather 
 than a sudden improvement in any one 
 faculty or function. 
 
FOR WOMEN. 75 
 
 Deprived of sunlight, the human be- 
 ing, like the plant, seems to lose some- 
 thing of its active powers of growth 
 and renewal. The girl in the sunless 
 room begins to feel tired and unac- 
 countably depressed under her burden 
 of work, and finds herself falling an 
 easy prey to colds, coughs, and various 
 other ailments. The room heated by 
 steam or furnace heat only, does not af- 
 ford the thorough ventilation so neces- 
 sary for the pleasant and easy working 
 of the brain. If the room is warmed to 
 a proper living temperature by furnace 
 or steam heat alone, it feels stuffy and 
 close ; and the student who lives in it 
 finds it difficult to keep awake over her 
 work, begins to lose her appetite, and 
 grows dull and sluggish generally. The 
 open fire is an extra item of expense 
 
J6 COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 at most of our colleges, but the parent 
 who incurs it will be fully repaid in 
 the increased health and increased 
 power of work that will be shown by 
 her daughter on account of it. 
 
 The ventilation, heating, and light- 
 ing of lecture-rooms and class-rooms 
 is seldom what it should be. Perhaps 
 if parents would complain more about 
 these things, something might be done 
 to remedy them ; but this is in gen- 
 eral a rather hard matter, even with 
 the best intentions, to provide for. It 
 is, then, of the utmost importance that 
 the parent should attend very particu- 
 larly to these conditions where they 
 can be the most easily regulated, in 
 the residence-halls ; for if matters are 
 well managed there, the student can 
 endure the discomforts of the class- 
 
FOR WOMEN. 77 
 
 room for the few hours each day that 
 she must spend in them. 
 
 The requisite for health in college 
 women most talked about and insisted 
 upon in general discussion is physical 
 exercise and training. Not many years 
 ago systematic athletics under regular 
 supervision was unknown in colleges for 
 women ; no definite courses in physical 
 education were given, little gymnastic 
 drill of any kind was practised, and 
 there was little voluntary occupation in 
 out-door sports. To-day nearly every 
 college has its well-equipped gymna- 
 sium, makes attendance and exercise 
 there obligatory, gives courses in physi- 
 cal training, and organizes athletic 
 sports under competent direction, so 
 that there appears to be little danger 
 that the student will fail to realize the 
 
78 COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 importance of this element in college- 
 life. 
 
 It is now time to say something em- 
 phatic about food, which is at least as 
 important as exercise 1 and much less 
 considered. The impression has gained 
 wide currency that our colleges have for- 
 gotten the wicked ways of the old-fash- 
 ioned boarding-schools, where genteel 
 starvation was the order of the day. 
 That impression is not fully correct. 
 There is hardly a college in this country 
 that sets a table adequate to supply the 
 needs of the young and growing bod- 
 
 1 Some indication of the relative value of food 
 and exercise in promoting good health may be found 
 in the fact that girls going to college from country 
 communities (which are as a rule not so well-nour- 
 ished, but are more accustomed to exercise) do not 
 show as high an average of health as girls going to 
 college from city communities (which are in general 
 better nourished, but less accustomed to exercise). 
 
FOR WOMEN. 79 
 
 ies and the actively working minds of 
 its students. 
 
 The importance of specially nourish- 
 ing food for the brainworker has never 
 been thoroughly recognized. It is 
 thought that the farmer, the laborer, 
 and the mechanic must have their beef 
 and mutton, but that the student needs 
 only a spare, light diet, since he appar- 
 ently does nothing to call for more. 
 Physiological investigation shows, how- 
 ever, that while the manual laborer can 
 get on very well with a diet of grains 
 and vegetables, for which a strong di- 
 gestion is required to separate the ne- 
 cessary amount of nutrition from the 
 great bulk of waste associated with it 
 in such foods, the brainworker does 
 his best work upon meat, a sort of 
 food that contains much nourishment 
 
80 COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 in small bulk, and that is especially- 
 easy of assimilation. 
 
 The woman-student is at a double 
 disadvantage where eating is concerned. 
 Not only is she, as a student, supposed 
 to require less food than the manual 
 worker, but as a woman she is expected 
 to care less and know less about eating 
 than a man. Women as a class are 
 notoriously regardless of eating; partly 
 because, as the cooks of the race, they 
 think first of feeding others and only 
 secondarily of themselves ; partly be- 
 cause, having been hitherto consumers 
 rather than producers, they do not feel 
 at liberty to spend much time or money 
 upon their own comfort ; and partly be- 
 cause the ascetic ideal, coming in with 
 the church doctrine of subdual of the 
 flesh, has found more acceptance with 
 
FOR WOMEN. 8 1 
 
 that half of the race by nature inclined 
 more to the spiritual than to the mate- 
 rial. 
 
 It is then considered not quite w wo- 
 manly " to make much of a disturbance 
 about eating. Yet the woman student, 
 with the heavy demands on her system, 
 with her delicate organization, with an 
 appetite too refined and discriminating 
 to find satisfaction in crude and coarse 
 cooking, needs the most carefully pre- 
 pared and the most nourishing food it 
 is possible to get, to enable her to do 
 her work successfully and creditably. 
 What is the use of an elaborate system 
 of physical training without some store 
 of food-supply as a basis ? What is the 
 use of out-door exercise to purify the 
 blood, if there is no proper nourishment 
 to feed it ? 
 
82 COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 An important place among the causes 
 of ill-health in college women is assigned 
 to worry ; but it is interesting to re- 
 member that one of the earliest symp- 
 toms of under-feeding is lowness of 
 spirits and a general depression of feel- 
 ing. The sufferer from under-feeding 
 does not localize his discomfort in any 
 one organ of the body ; but, feeling it as 
 an undertone of gloom and distress in 
 all his mental operations, he promptly 
 attributes it to mental causes, and thinks 
 he is discouraged, disappointed, unap- 
 preciated, homesick, or even in love, 
 when he is really only under-fed. The 
 dyspeptic is proverbially a pessimist, and 
 we may perhaps venture the guess that 
 the strenuous Puritan conscience was in- 
 flamed to its uncomfortable pitch of irri- 
 tation by a lack on these bleak shores of 
 
FOR WOMEN. 83 
 
 the generous diet of old England. It 
 may be doubted if women would be so 
 nervous, so "sensitive," so prone to 
 tears, as tradition credits them with be- 
 ing, if they habitually had enough to eat. 
 The parent, then, in choosing a col- 
 lege for the daughter, must look care- 
 fully to the sort of table that is to be set 
 before her. This is a matter that needs 
 close attention, because it is so very 
 hard to remedy. The college has pro- 
 vided means of exercise for pupils, partly 
 because parents and the public could 
 see whether this was done or not, partly 
 because gymnasiums, athletic fields and 
 athletic teams, are means of attraction, 
 and a good advertisement. The college 
 does not provide as good a table as it 
 ought to, because no one outside can 
 easily know, or will care especially 
 
84 COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 whether it does so or not. The college 
 begrudges to food an expenditure it 
 might use for the enlargement of its 
 faculty, or it prefers to keep living 
 expenses to the lowest point so that as 
 few students as possible may be kept 
 away by the cost. Often the college 
 may spend money enough for the raw 
 material of food, but will employ some 
 incompetent person as housekeeper, who 
 has no judgment in the selection or 
 preparation of food. Students them- 
 selves are unwilling to complain pub- 
 licly of a poor table for fear of being 
 " disloyal " to their college; and the col- 
 lege, knowing this, is disposed to pay 
 little attention to their remonstrances in 
 private. Sometimes the students them- 
 selves regulate the table in student clubs, 
 and reduce diet far below what it ought 
 
FOR WOMEN. 85 
 
 to be, in their desire to reduce expenses 
 as far as possible. 
 
 If the parent tries to find out whether 
 college fare is or is not adequate for the 
 needs of the college student, the task 
 is a hard one. College managers can 
 scarcely be made to feel how important 
 this matter is ; and in order to ward off 
 criticism, and yet keep on in their old 
 way, they will resort to various devices 
 to give the parent a good impression 
 of the table. When it is known that 
 visitors are coming, extra preparations 
 may be made, or extra attention and ex- 
 tra fare may be given at teachers' and 
 guests' tables. The parent, even when 
 hitting upon an average meal or two, 
 can hardly realize what it would be to 
 live on such meals day after day and 
 month after month. As the matter is 
 
86 COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 so difficult to get at, the paren»t must try 
 all the more to know just how the col- 
 lege feeds its students habitually ; every 
 means for personal observation must be 
 used, and the daughter must be encour- 
 aged to report accurately her daily ex- 
 perience. 
 
 The trouble can be remedied if the 
 colleges set seriously to work to do it. 
 Large households, like the college house- 
 hold, can be fed year in and year out, to 
 their continued satisfaction as well as 
 benefit, if money enough is spent to pay 
 for materials, and care and thought 
 enough are spent in providing, preparing, 
 and serving them. It is of the greatest 
 importance to every one concerned that 
 this matter should be set right, — to the 
 college, to parents, and to students, who 
 all have the success of the higher edu- 
 
FOR WOMEN. 8? 
 
 cation at heart. The cases of broken 
 health due to imperfect feeding are 
 bruited about as " the result of the 
 higher education ; " and the whole move- 
 ment receives, most unjustly, a serious 
 setback in the community. 
 
 All the factors of a healthy life above 
 mentioned act together in building up 
 the student. Exercise creates a demand 
 for wholesome food ; good food relieves 
 the student from the feeling of utter ex- 
 haustion after work that makes exercise 
 so distasteful ; ventilation and sunlight 
 in the student's room help to keep her 
 in the general condition of normal phys- 
 ical activity in which food and exercise 
 can do the most good. 
 
 Having seen that the conditions ne- 
 cessary to physical well-being are pres- 
 ent in the college, the parent must now 
 
88 COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 see that those conditions are also pres- 
 ent which are necessary to the mental 
 and moral development of the student, 
 but which cannot be set down in definite 
 form in the catalogue. The parent must 
 try to learn something, through personal 
 acquaintance, of the student body, the 
 instructing body, and the administrative 
 body of the college. 
 
 It is hard to explain fully how any 
 considerable knowledge of persons and 
 their influence is gained by a merely 
 casual meeting with them, such as is 
 likely to be the limit of acquaintance 
 to most parents with the various groups 
 in the college before the girl is placed 
 there ; and those who are judged as a 
 result of it will be very likely to protest 
 that such a judgment is unfair. The 
 instructor, for example, will feel that 
 
FOR WOMEN. 89 
 
 the parent, unlearned in any specialty, 
 cannot judge him or his work on a 
 chance visit to a class-room ; and yet 
 something very real is gained even 
 under these circumstances to fill out the 
 bare outline furnished by the college 
 catalogue in regard to its teaching- 
 staff. 
 
 The influence of personality, so hard 
 to define, is easy to feel, even upon com- 
 paratively short acquaintance. The rec- 
 ord of degrees, of published work, of 
 academic honors or standing, leaves 
 something to be added in regard to the 
 real character and motives of the man 
 or woman. Who could guess before- 
 hand that a certain professor, known 
 widely for his brilliant and inspiring 
 written work in his chosen subject, 
 could be so dull and depressing in his 
 
90 COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 college-teaching? Who could fancy 
 that this other, distinguished for his 
 leadership in certain great moral move- 
 ments, is so honeycombed with vanity 
 and self-conceit that instruction and dis- 
 cussion in his class-room are replaced 
 by oracular deliverances from the chair, 
 and mute adoration (or equally mute 
 hostility) from the benches ? Who could 
 know that this other, showing by his 
 record some devotion to pure scholar- 
 ship and presumably to its ideals, would 
 make his classes a scene of social diver- 
 sion to himself, by playing upon the 
 personal prejudices, rivalries, vanities, 
 and foolish sentimentalities of his pu- 
 pils ? Still another may be learned in 
 book-lore, but so lacking in general cul- 
 tivation, and so ill-mannered, as to be 
 quite unsuited to the office of develop- 
 
FOR WOMEN. 91 
 
 ing refinement of thought and feeling in 
 others. All the traits above indicated 
 show themselves quickly, even to the 
 casual observer, and should be consid- 
 ered as fitting for condemnation and 
 reproof in a college professor as in any 
 other man or woman. The scholar, of 
 all others, has the least excuse for these, 
 and can, indeed, do the most harm by 
 them. In the old phrase, " getttleman 
 and scholar " should describe the per- 
 sons under whose care our young people 
 are to come. 
 
 Not less important is some personal 
 acquaintance with the administrative 
 body that has so much to do in form- 
 ing the college- spirit, and in regulating 
 the conditions of college-life. It is 
 most important to know whether that 
 body holds the proper ideals before the 
 
92 COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 student, and encourages the proper 
 motives. Does it, or does it not, fos- 
 ter anxious contest over " marks " and 
 "honors " ? Does it, or does it not, recog- 
 nize the pushing and the showy student 
 at the expense of the quiet, scholarly 
 one ? Does it, or does it not, in its deal- 
 ings show a strict regard for integrity ? 
 or is it found to be using the students, 
 and perhaps the instructors too, as 
 pawns on a chess-board, to be moved 
 here and there at convenience as best 
 suits the exigencies of a game of its 
 own ? The parent should be convinced 
 that the true welfare of the student is 
 really and genuinely the main object of 
 the college, as represented by its gov- 
 erning body, and not increase in num- 
 bers, endowments, or the proud position 
 of "first" in some shape or other. 
 
FOR WOMEN. 93 
 
 The parent should also take some 
 pains to come into personal contact 
 with that group-person, the student 
 body. A great deal of discussion on 
 the subject of co-education is wasted 
 because the matter is argued from an 
 abstract point of view, without regard 
 to the concrete conditions involved. 
 A little observation is worth a hundred 
 theories. If the mother is undecided 
 whether she wants her daughter edu- 
 cated with men and women together, 
 or with women alone, let her go where 
 the conditions she has in mind are act- 
 ually existing, and see whether in act- 
 ual fact the result, as shown in the 
 general character and physiognomy of 
 the student-group, is such as she would 
 approve of. 
 
 It may be said that the parent can 
 
94 COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 find out especially little of the real na- 
 ture of the student-group in a brief visit, 
 hampered as it is by the conventionali- 
 ties that shut out the chance visitor of 
 mature years from the inner circle of 
 student-life. 
 
 But the careful observer can get a 
 great deal, even under these hindrances. 
 Trifles reveal much. Looks, manner, 
 bearing, little ways of doing and saying 
 things, are evidences of general char- 
 acter and tone. The parent can tell 
 whether the student-personality is well 
 or ill-bred ; whether the typical student 
 is clear-voiced but quiet, or shrill-toned, 
 noisy, and voluble ; whether she steps 
 with the alert springiness of health and 
 a hearty interest in things, or with the 
 heavy tramp of rude boorishness or 
 the dragging shuffle of sentimentality 
 
FOR WOMEN. 95 
 
 and languor. Her manner of dealing 
 with her fellows in the public and ob- 
 vious places where the casual stranger 
 is likely to encounter her tells some- 
 thing about her. Is she gushing, chat- 
 tering, regardless of the presence of 
 strangers, and unrestrained in demon- 
 stration of any chance feeling, or is 
 she seen to be pleasantly companion- 
 able, yet with a delicate reserve that 
 keeps intact the conventions of a re- 
 fined society and a gentle home ; 
 Does she, or does she not, manifest a 
 certain unpleasant priggishness ? Does 
 she, or does she not, indulge in the false 
 patriotism that consists in obtrusive 
 laudation of everything within her own 
 college, and criticism and condemna- 
 tion of everything outside of it? The 
 mother can tell pretty well after brief 
 
g6 COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 observation of the college-group whether 
 the traits of that group are those she 
 would be glad to see encouraged and 
 developed in her daughter. 
 
 All this may seem a rather laborious 
 method of getting a daughter started in 
 a chosen line of work ; but parenthood, 
 properly followed, is of necessity a labo- 
 rious occupation. No mechanical de- 
 vice has been as yet invented by which 
 a child may be trained in the way it 
 should go without labor on the part of 
 its parents ; and every child brought 
 into the world has a right to this train- 
 ing, and thus to the parents' thought 
 and care. The results, too, are worth 
 all the trouble and cost. The girl her- 
 self gets benefit by such training ; fur- 
 thermore, the general system of educa- 
 tion would receive a lift in that way that 
 
FOR WOMEN. 97 
 
 it could get in no other, and, in conse- 
 quence, the general plane of society at 
 large would be correspondingly elevated. 
 In education, as in touring, " personally 
 conducted " is an excellent motto. 
 
98 COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 LIFE AT COLLEGE. 
 
 / T^HAT the years passed within col- 
 -*■ lege walls make up a period 
 looked back upon as one of the most, 
 if not the most, delightful in life, is the 
 almost universal testimony of those who 
 have had experience of them. Even 
 supposing the years have not been 
 "well-spent," in the sense in which that 
 phrase would be used by judicious and 
 sober-minded elderly relatives and ad- 
 visers, the student has found in them 
 much pleasure, and has got at least a 
 little good. And yet every student feels 
 at the end of the four years as if she 
 could have improved upon her use of 
 
FOR WOMEN. 99 
 
 them, and would like a chance to try 
 them over again. Some of the things 
 she thinks to herself at the end of her 
 college-life would be of use to her fel- 
 low-student just beginning, if it were 
 not for the unfortunate peculiarity of 
 lessons learned from experience, — that 
 they cannot be passed on at second 
 hand to others; the skilful old school- 
 mistress herself must teach every one 
 directly. Still, there is a chance that 
 a word here and there will be listened 
 to and remembered, which may help, 
 or in a small degree forestall, the pro- 
 cess of experience. 
 
 One of the things the outgoing stu- 
 dent thinks is that she could have 
 selected her studies better. With the 
 present prevalence of the elective sys- 
 tem in our colleges, the student has 
 
100 COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 thrown upon her the responsibility of 
 forming for herself, to a great extent, the 
 general outlines of her college-course. 
 There is a natural tendency on the part 
 of the entering student to choose work 
 for the subject, and not with reference 
 to the facilities offered for pursuing it. 
 There is also a tendency to choose that 
 subject for special study in the college 
 that has taken up the bulk of time, 
 thought, and interest in the preparatory 
 school. The beginner at college will, 
 in nine cases out of ten, fancy herself 
 a warm devotee of the classics, because 
 she has left the preparatory school 
 flushed with the delight of partial mas- 
 tery of a subject associated most closely 
 with the idea of the college for gener- 
 ations and generations. The student 
 will usually find, however, as her mind 
 
FOR WOMEN. 10 1 
 
 matures, and as she has more experi- 
 ence, that a continued lingering in clas- 
 sic shades does not satisfy her, and that 
 when she has once gained the power of 
 easy access to the treasures of classic 
 thought by the acquirement of a good 
 reading knowledge of Greek and Latin, 
 she is ready to turn to something else. 
 She must not, then, be too quick in de- 
 ciding just what her specialty is to be, 
 for she cannot be sure of her true bent 
 with the small experience she has upon 
 entering college. 
 
 Whatever her special tastes may really 
 prove to be, the student of to-day should 
 try in her college-course to gain some 
 acquaintance with the subjects that 
 connect themselves with the active in- 
 terests and growing tendencies of the 
 time. Suppose that she does not share 
 
102 COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 these interests or approve of these ten- 
 dencies; even to combat them prop- 
 erly she must know something accurate 
 and definite about them. No student 
 should leave college without some ac- 
 quaintance with physical science and its 
 methods, or without some familiarity 
 with one or more of the social studies 
 now undergoing so rapid a development, 
 and occupying such an increasingly 
 prominent place in the thought of the 
 time. 
 
 The student should not only get out 
 of the beaten track of what she thinks 
 is her specialty enough to select other 
 subjects, but she should also go beyond 
 consideration of the subject at all, if 
 she happens to know of a particularly 
 brilliant and inspiring instructor whose 
 work she may choose. Let her place 
 
FOR WOMEN. 103 
 
 herself (if ner preparation and the scope 
 of choice allowed by the college permit 
 it) under the good teacher, no matter 
 what he teaches ; for it is, after all, not 
 what one learns in the college, but how 
 one learns, that is of the most impor- 
 tance. The general mental stimulus 
 gained from brilliant thought and clear 
 exposition in one subject will be of 
 benefit when one turns to others ; and 
 besides, the great man or woman, os- 
 tensibly teaching one subject only, will 
 often, in chance allusions and observa- 
 tions, throw more light on other, appar- 
 ently foreign subjects, than is gained 
 from direct instruction in a full course 
 where the teaching is dull and narrow. 
 
 Another thing the outgoing student 
 thinks is, that she could have secured 
 better results with less fuss and fatigue. 
 
104 COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 The girl upon entering college is bewil- 
 dered by the variety and complexity of 
 the new arrangements and the new 
 tasks; she is distracted by association 
 with the new and unexplored personali- 
 ties about her. In many of our colleges 
 work is set at a fairly hard pace ; and 
 unless the student is quick to arrange 
 and plan it out, she will find herself 
 overwhelmed before she knows it by 
 the ever-mounting sum of each day's re- 
 quirements. The conscientious student, 
 at first experience of the new tasks, is 
 apt to spend her entire waking time, 
 and some that should be devoted to 
 sleep, in the effort to get through them 
 in their minutest detail, to the neglect 
 of proper exercise and social life ; while 
 the more easy-going, discouraged at the 
 start, attempts nothing further than so 
 
FOR WOMEN. I05 
 
 much of study and preparation as shall 
 keep her just this side the brink of dis- 
 missal from her classes. 
 
 Both extremes are bad, and can easily 
 be avoided. The student who has been 
 taught at home or in the preparatory 
 school to think and not merely to cram, 
 should be able from the start to get the 
 better of her work. She will know how 
 to take up a subject ; separating the im- 
 portant features from the unimportant, 
 she will grapple strenuously with the 
 former, and allow the latter to fall in line 
 naturally as the result of firm and defi- 
 nite dealing with the main matters. This 
 is one important method of saving labor, 
 and of disciplining the mind as well ; 
 for the mechanical student, who plods 
 through everything, thick and thin, with 
 the same amount of mental emphasis, 
 
106 COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 is not only wearing herself out by her 
 toil, but is failing to train that great- 
 est of faculties, which is, indeed, in its 
 perfection, the secret of genius, — the 
 selective power of mind, which gives 
 order, proportion, and perspective to any 
 matter it takes up. 
 
 Another means of accomplishing the 
 best results in the least given time is to 
 practise a strict concentration when en- 
 gaged in work. Every student should 
 have some place where she may be by 
 herself to study ; if this is not possible, 
 she may and must create a solitude 
 about herself that shall be unbroken 
 until the study-time is over. It is sur- 
 prising to find how much can be done 
 in a crowd, and in a noisy crowd too, if 
 the student determines resolutely not to 
 hear or to see what is going on around 
 
FOR WOMEN. I07 
 
 her. Very unfortunate is that person, 
 and liable to be very obnoxious to her 
 fellow-students, who requires for the pur- 
 suance of her study the silence of the 
 sick-room and the solitude of the desert. 
 On the other hand, the student who 
 wants to use her time to the best advan- 
 tage will not encourage promiscuous vis- 
 iting or indulge in casual conversation 
 while she is at work, nor will she suc- 
 cumb to the charms of ensemble study- 
 ing, — a most delightful means of pass- 
 ing the time, but not found productive 
 of the best results. The hard knots, it 
 seems, have to be untangled, after all, by 
 one's own fingers ; and then, no two stu- 
 dents seem to find the same hard knots. 
 A distinct help in getting through 
 work is found in restricting it to certain 
 and proper hours. While within those 
 
108 COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 hours the student will practise that 
 close concentration just recommended, 
 at the end of them she will drop work 
 as absolutely and completely as if she 
 had never heard of it. The benefit of 
 this course is seen when the time comes 
 for the student to go at her next task. 
 Having had a thorough rest, she is 
 able to take up her work with a swing 
 and a spirit impossible where she is al- 
 ways dragging along at something, and 
 she will consequently accomplish much 
 more. 
 
 The student who works in this way 
 will learn thoroughly well what she does 
 learn, even if she does not cover all the 
 ground. She will also be assisting the 
 college to determine what is the proper 
 amount of work to be set the average 
 student ; for she win help to show, by the 
 
FOR WOMEN. IO9 
 
 amount she covers, where the point lies 
 beyond which the student must either 
 work longer than is healthful and safe, or 
 else be superficial. 
 
 This test, to be effective, demands 
 that the time set for study should be 
 employed with honest concentration and 
 application. It also demands that the 
 study-time should be some definite pe- 
 riod, which is suited to the individual 
 student's capacity of endurance, mental 
 and physical, and which is not to be 
 extended on every occasion of pressure 
 from college requirements. The col- 
 lege has to make up its estimate of the 
 amount of work to be covered in the 
 college year or half-year, as an average 
 of the work accomplished by the good, 
 bad, and indifferent members of its 
 classes ; but there is so much false 
 
IIO COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 pride in each of these divisions that it 
 is found difficult to get at their normal 
 power of work. The dull student is 
 anxious to be considered at least moder- 
 ately capable, and will not admit that 
 she must work beyond the limits of 
 healthful activity in order to cover the 
 ground that the others do. The ordi- 
 nary student wants to be ranked with 
 the clever student, and she, in turn, 
 overworks ; while the clever student, 
 for her part, feeling the pressure of 
 those behind her, finds that in order to 
 keep her reputation for unusual quick- 
 ness and ability, she, too, must spend 
 more hours than she ought over her 
 tasks. 
 
 In the mad race to do everything, 
 they all, in their fatigue, lose the best 
 good of what they are trying to get. 
 
FOR WOMEN. Ill 
 
 The dull student should frankly rec- 
 cognize that no two persons are of 
 exactly equal ability in all directions, 
 and that each one must make the best 
 of herself without regard to what others 
 are making of themselves ; and she 
 must resolutely determine to spend an 
 extra year in the college if it seems 
 necessary to do so in order to get the 
 full benefit of the college-course. At 
 the other extreme, the bright student 
 must remember that a college reputa- 
 tion is fleeting at best, and that for 
 real work in the world she stands a 
 better chance if she takes things a little 
 easy, looks about her a little, and allows 
 her mind some liberty to grow in the 
 way of nature. 
 
 When the working-hours are over, 
 comes the opportunity for various out- 
 
112 COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 side activities that are useful to the 
 student in many ways. The debating 
 society, the college paper, the glee club, 
 the dramatic organization, call for va- 
 ried talents and a ready activity on the 
 part of the student, and tend to cul- 
 tivate them in her. She must assume a 
 degree of responsibility in the conduct 
 of these enterprises that will bring out 
 latent capabilities for decisive action ; 
 her powers of invention are stimulated 
 as they perhaps never are in the class- 
 room ; and in working with others for 
 a common end, she learns something of 
 the valuable art of leadership, or the no 
 less valuable art of helpful subordination. 
 After work-hours, too, comes exer- 
 cise, which should be conscientiously 
 attended to in the form that best fits 
 the individual case. Of late years, in 
 
FOR WOMEN. 113 
 
 our laudable desire to cultivate the 
 body along with the mind, liberal sac- 
 rifice has been paid to the gymnasium 
 fetich. Exercise in the gymnasium has 
 been made compulsory in most of our 
 colleges, in the belief that it will be of 
 benefit to every student engaging in it 
 under proper direction. In many in- 
 stances, however, gymnasium work of 
 any kind is felt as an additional task, 
 heaped upon the task of study, not the 
 refreshment and restorative afterstudy 
 that it is meant to be. To do good, 
 exercise must be attended by two cir- 
 cumstances, one mental and one physi- 
 cal ; namely, enjoyment and fresh air. 
 To many students no enjoyment what- 
 ever is afforded by gymnasium work — 
 it seems a stupid, aimless performance 
 in all its diversities ; and as for air, that 
 
114 COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 which floats casually through opened 
 upper windows is but a poor substitute 
 for the wide and sunlit expanse of the 
 great ocean of atmosphere that bathes 
 all out-of-doors in its invigorating cur- 
 rents. 
 
 Gymnasium work is considered ne- 
 cessary from the mistaken but wide- 
 spread notion that muscular develop- 
 ment is in itself a good thing. The 
 process of developing the muscle is 
 attended by heightened respiration, and 
 a consequent enrichment of the blood, 
 whereby is offered increased nourish- 
 ment to the organs and tissues in gen- 
 eral, including that greedy bloodsucker, 
 the brain. But the muscles themselves 
 are greedy also ; and if the process of 
 their development is carried on so vigor- 
 ously that they absorb for their own 
 
FOR WOMEN. 115 
 
 needs the greater part of the nourish- 
 ment afforded by the freshened blood, 
 the worker is left with a sense of fatigue 
 in the mind instead of the renewed 
 strength and power she ought to feel. 
 Many students have this sense of fa- 
 tigue after work in the gymnasium, but 
 feel a decided refreshment after out-of- 
 door exercise, which quickens and puri- 
 fies the blood at least as well as, if not 
 better than, gymnasium practice. That 
 student is wise, then, who, after suitable 
 trial, finding this to be the case with 
 her, frankly and deliberately gets rid of 
 the gymnasium all she can, and walks, 
 rides, drives, wheels, and plays tennis 
 or basket-ball, changing the current of 
 her thought as well as of her blood, so 
 that she will return to her books with 
 fresh delight and zest. 
 
Il6 COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 The student should eat well and regu- 
 larly. There is probably no use in say- 
 ing anything to the young collegian 
 about the harmful effects of too much 
 tea, biscuits, potted meats, and candy at 
 unholy hours. Perhaps the best thing 
 to do is to advise hearty and consistent 
 application to the most nourishing food 
 to be found on the college tables. If 
 the three stated meal-times do not af- 
 ford enough, if there is a certain period 
 every day in which the system calls for 
 replenishment, the student should not 
 be weary of complaining until condi- 
 tions are set right; and if complaint is 
 finally useless, she must make regular 
 provision for this need out of stores 
 of her own, selected for wholesomeness 
 and real nourishment. 
 
 Social life is as important to the stu- 
 
FOR WOMEN. 117 
 
 dent as exercise or food; and is taken 
 to so naturally by the average girl that 
 it is scarcely necessary to recommend 
 it, but rather to suggest the possibility 
 of undue indulgence in its delights. 
 There is an overpowering fascination 
 for the incoming student in the new 
 personalities by which she is surrounded, 
 and one of her most interesting occupa- 
 tions is to come into relation with them. 
 Before she knows it almost, she is a 
 member of a " set," or small group, with 
 whom her lot is thenceforth cast, and 
 with whom she is associated in the gen- 
 eral estimation from that time on. 
 
 As these associations are so influen- 
 tial in determining a student's place in 
 the college-world, and have a decided 
 effect upon her own character as well, 
 the cardinal maxim for this case should 
 
Il8 COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 be, " Don't be in a hurry." The stu- 
 dent should restrain for a bit her first 
 impulsive motions to hand-and-glove 
 fellowship, until the glamour of novelty 
 wears off, and she knows her ground. 
 It is not always those most in evidence 
 to the new-comer — those that welcome 
 her the most boisterously, or that are 
 the most conspicuous at casual meeting 
 here and there — that will prove to be 
 the most valuable friends or the most 
 healthful influences. 
 
 In her association with the student- 
 group as a whole, the student who 
 pays no attention to " college-opinion," 
 the expression of the collective mind, 
 is something like Aristotle's non-social 
 man, either above or below human- 
 ity. She must, however, in following it, 
 use common-sense and good judgment. 
 
FOR WOMEN. II9 
 
 College-opinion does much that is good 
 to form character and manners, but it 
 also takes some freaky and foolish 
 turns ; and while it would be expecting 
 the wisdom of years in the head of 
 youth to think that a student will know 
 just when to conform and when to stand 
 out against the dictum of the collective 
 mind, she must try to make a distinc- 
 tion as best she can by the aid of her 
 own reason. 
 
 She will respect the sentiment now 
 prevalent in the college-group of dis- 
 taste for the " grind " far enough not to 
 make studies and books the sole theme 
 of conversation, and yet she will see to 
 it that solid work and thought are re- 
 spected in her person and in others; 
 she will try not to be so ill-dressed and 
 untidy as to call down criticism from 
 
120 COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 the college-group on that score, yet she 
 will not enter into any competition for 
 superiority in garb and ornament. She 
 will not try to make herself that college 
 divinity, the " popular girl," nor will she 
 envy her that proud position; but she 
 will make herself sure of the quiet but 
 genuine respect and regard of her fellow- 
 students, by attending faithfully to her 
 own business, and at the same time 
 showing an obliging disposition and an 
 unassuming manner. She will, in short, 
 remember that the judgment of the col- 
 lege-circle is not final, though it will 
 probably embody a certain rough truth 
 in regard to her and her actions that 
 she may profit by. 
 
 Besides her intercourse with the stu- 
 dent-body, the student comes into more 
 or less close relation with the teaching 
 
FOR WOMEN. 121 
 
 and administrative body. One of the 
 things the student thinks when she 
 leaves the college, or more likely when 
 she has been out a year or two, and has 
 looked about her a little in the world, is 
 that she would show a little different 
 spirit in her relations with her instruc- 
 tors if she had her college-life to live 
 over again. She would show more lib- 
 erality on the one hand, more indepen- 
 dence on the other. 
 
 Women seem by nature to demand 
 from others and themselves a logical 
 and abstract consistency that the vary- 
 ing phases of actual concrete life do not 
 permit. It is one of the long-standing 
 misconceptions concerning the sex that 
 women are the illogical branch of the 
 human race : on the contrary, they are 
 the most bent on strict deduction from 
 
122 COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 premise to conclusion in every instance. 
 The wider contact with the world that 
 men have had through so many ages 
 has tended to make them see a little 
 more clearly that abstract formulation 
 is at best a most inadequate covering 
 for the infinitely variable, infinitely com- 
 plex, truth of things, and that verbal 
 expression is a most elusive and am- 
 biguous representation of thought. 
 
 A certain lack of the spirit of allow- 
 ance seems a special feature of the 
 woman's college. The instructors there 
 find that they must be extremely careful 
 at all times how they commit themselves 
 in expression, since they are sure to be 
 pinned down to every syllable and letter 
 of it thereafter. The woman-student 
 should try to realize and accept the fact 
 that truth transcends expression, that 
 
FOR WOMEN. 123 
 
 views of truth may be somewhat irreg- 
 ular or even verbally erroneous, and yet 
 at the same time profoundly stimulating. 
 Let her, then, accept in the broadest 
 spirit the instruction offered, and not 
 waste the actual good of it in niggling 
 criticism of minor inconsistencies and 
 peculiarities. 
 
 The feeling that truth has so many 
 aspects, and is so hard to catch and 
 define, will also make the student more 
 independent in her attitude toward her 
 instructors, as well as more tolerant of 
 them. The real world is so rich and 
 various, the individual mind is so imper- 
 fect and limited, that each one can re- 
 flect only a few phases of the great 
 complex. . No one mind can adequately 
 formulate the universe: the "answer" 
 in the book and the doctrine of the 
 
124 COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 professor do not exhaust knowledge. 
 All that has been found out is but a 
 speck in the ocean of the unknown. 
 The professor is a learner as well as 
 the student, who, as a separate and dis- 
 tinct facet in the many-sided crystal of 
 human society, may reflect a gleam of 
 truth un caught by any of the others. 
 Hence the student need not hang help- 
 lessly upon the opinions, views, ideas, 
 and estimates of her favorite professor, 
 but should try to cultivate some of her 
 own. 
 
 The student must try also not to find 
 her only support in the professor's ap- 
 proval ; nor should she be so anxious 
 to win his good opinion as to become 
 the victim of a fevered self-conscious- 
 ness in every act of her daily inter- 
 course with him. It is natural for the 
 
FOR WOMEN. 125 
 
 girl-student to lay much emphasis on 
 approval ; since all the ages have united 
 in declaring that woman's great func- 
 tion is to please, and to please by that 
 which is most closely associated with 
 her personality, — by her beauty of form 
 and feature, by her manner, and by her 
 dress. It would not be strange, then, 
 if, as a result of the force of social 
 tradition, women should think when 
 doing anything, not simply of what they 
 are doing and of the effect their work 
 will have, but of how they appear while 
 doing it, and what impression they are 
 making. This would be particularly the 
 case in a pursuit that is new to them, 
 as the higher education is. Habit makes 
 long-followed employments more or less 
 automatic, so that self-consciousness 
 would naturally be less aroused in them. 
 
126 COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 With this double influence at work, 
 the wonder is not that the college-girl 
 shows so much self-consciousness, but 
 so little. It is not she, usually, but 
 some one else, who blazons the fact 
 that she is a student, and " knows so 
 much one does not dare to speak to 
 her." 
 
 The self-consciousness shown by the 
 woman - student is usually evidenced 
 more in relation with her instructors 
 than anywhere else, for a special rea- 
 son that lifts it above the plane of 
 mere vanity. The college-girl feels that 
 the higher education for women is still 
 regarded as more or less of an experi- 
 ment. In that experiment she is the 
 object worked with, tested, and closely 
 scrutinized : the professors are the more 
 or less friendly, always critical and ob- 
 
FOR WOMEN. 127 
 
 servant, experimenters. She feels that 
 in her success or failure in so far de- 
 pends the success or failure of the 
 higher education for woman in general ; 
 and from this feeling in large part 
 arises that extreme sensibility to praise 
 and blame so often noticed in our 
 woman's colleges, and that feverish 
 anxiety to do with mechanical precis- 
 ion and completeness all possible tasks 
 set by instructors. It would be inju- 
 dicious to tell a boy to pay little atten- 
 tion to what his professors think of 
 him ; it would be merely a wholesome 
 corrective of an exaggerated tendency 
 to tell a girl the same thing. 
 
 That girl keeps the proper attitude 
 of mind toward her instructors who, 
 taking them for what they are, men and 
 women of more knowledge and experi- 
 
128 COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 ence than herself, but with inevitable 
 imperfection, uses their comment and 
 criticism for her own improvement and 
 instruction, but makes her own judg- 
 ment and good sense, not theirs, the 
 ultimate standard of appeal for her 
 guidance. 
 
 That student will not burst into tears 
 at criticism, feeling herself personally 
 degraded by failure to come up to the 
 instructor's standard ; she will simply 
 think she is getting the guidance and 
 advice she came to college for. She 
 will not writhe and shrivel under sar- 
 casm ; she will simply think the instruc- 
 tor has bad manners. She will not suffer 
 for lack of the praise she sees heaped 
 upon others whom she considers her 
 inferiors ; she will simply think that 
 tastes differ, and that if she is doing 
 
FOR WOMEN. 129 
 
 her best work and the professor does 
 not happen to fancy it, it is a matter 
 of small consequence. 
 
 A little wholesome and sturdy self- 
 reliance without self-assertion is a de- 
 sirable quality. It is this self-reliance, 
 and the power to think and to act 
 developed in the four years of college- 
 life, as well as the information gained 
 in them, that enables the college-stu- 
 dent to come out into the world to be 
 a useful and helpful member of society 
 instead of a drag and burden on it. 
 
I30 COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE GRADUATE STUDENT. 
 
 GRADUATE study as a process of 
 acquirement that follows practi- 
 cally the same methods and pursues 
 the same ends as the undergraduate 
 course is by no means new to us in 
 this country. There is, however, an- 
 other kind of graduate study that pro- 
 ceeds on quite different lines from the 
 work of the undergraduate school. In 
 it the student tries not only to acquire, 
 but to produce, not merely to make 
 himself master of the existing stock of 
 knowledge, but to add something to it. 
 
 In this latter sense, graduate study 
 has not long been followed here ; but in 
 
FOR WOMEN. 131 
 
 this brief period it has experienced such 
 rapid and strong development, that it 
 has fairly crowded out the other kind 
 from the right to its name, and to-day 
 we mean by "graduate study" dis- 
 tinctly the work of original research, 
 and by the graduate student, the in- 
 vestigator and would-be discoverer. 
 
 The year 1876, which marks more 
 than one epoch in our national life, 
 marks the beginning of a distinct move- 
 ment in this country toward graduate 
 study of the latter type, with the open- 
 ing of the Johns Hopkins University, 
 which established as its ideal the en- 
 couragement of original research here 
 as it was carried on in the German 
 universities. 
 
 The movement thus started was felt 
 in all parts of the collegiate system. 
 
132 COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 Twenty-four colleges and universities 
 are now represented in a Federation 
 of Graduate Clubs, on the ground of 
 offering extended and thorough grad- 
 uate courses ; and of this number only 
 five were engaged in giving such work, 
 and had granted higher degrees in rec- 
 ognition of it, before the Johns Hop- 
 kins University was opened. In 1885 
 Bryn Mawr College for women was 
 founded, after the model of Johns Hop- 
 kins, providing for graduate instruc- 
 tion from the first. In the same year 
 a graduate department was organized in 
 the University of Pennsylvania. In 
 1889 Barnard College for women was 
 opened, giving access to graduate fa- 
 cilities at Columbia College ; Brown 
 granted its first degrees from a grad- 
 uate department ; and Clark University 
 
FOR WOMEN. 133 
 
 at Worcester, founded for purposes of 
 graduate study exclusively, began its 
 work. In 1890 the graduate depart- 
 ment of Columbia College was thor- 
 oughly reorganized, and the Leland 
 Stanford Jr. University was opened, 
 offering graduate courses from the be- 
 ginning. In 1892, another epoch-mak- 
 ing year in the history of our national 
 civilization, the University of Chicago 
 opened its doors, offering ample op- 
 portunities for research work in every 
 department; Yale University reorgan- 
 ized its graduate school, and opened 
 it to women ; and several other insti- 
 tutions either reorganized graduate de- 
 partments or established them for the 
 first time. 
 
 The work goes on with no abatement 
 of vigor, and in all this progress 
 
134 COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 women have shared the benefits. In 
 nineteen of the twenty-four colleges on 
 the list of the Federation of Graduate 
 Clubs, which embraces practically all of 
 the institutions doing really important 
 graduate work in this country, women 
 have the enjoyment of graduate privi- 
 leges, either exclusively or equally with 
 men ; of the five remaining, which nom- 
 inally do not receive women, two, 
 Harvard and Columbia, extend their 
 graduate opportunities to women under 
 cover of registration at Barnard and 
 Radcliffe; and two more, Johns Hop- 
 kins and Clark, have been known to 
 accord to women who especially wished 
 and needed it, access to their lecture- 
 rooms and laboratories, and other privi- 
 leges. 
 
 The graduate field in this country is, 
 
FOR WOMEN. I35 
 
 then, practically open in its entire ex- 
 tent to the woman-student. Looking 
 across the sea, we find there also wide 
 opportunity for her. A new era for 
 woman's education abroad was begun 
 with the opening to women of the Uni- 
 versity of Zurich in 1872. 
 
 In some countries of Europe, not, 
 strangely enough, in those inhabited 
 by descendants of that primitive Teu- 
 tonic race to which we are wont to 
 ascribe the dogma of woman's equality 
 with man, but in the Romance coun- 
 tries of France, Italy, and Spain, the 
 privileges of the universities have never 
 been formally denied to women, al- 
 though custom and general social feel- 
 ing have until a recent date largely 
 kept those privileges in practice re- 
 served for men. 
 
I36 COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 But after the opening to women of 
 the University at Zurich, a general 
 movement was begun to make use of 
 such opportunities as were at the mo- 
 ment available, or could be made so. 
 University after university has admitted 
 women, either formally and regularly, 
 or informally and as a matter of spe- 
 cial privilege, until by this time, if the 
 woman-student is bent on securing the 
 best guidance in any given subject, 
 she is practically certain of having 
 the opportunity to do so. The uni- 
 versities of France, Italy, and Spain, 
 of Holland and Belgium, of Norway, 
 Sweden, and Denmark, of Switzerland 
 and Greece, are open to women on 
 the same terms as to men, with some 
 small and especial exceptions and ex- 
 clusions in certain cases. Many of 
 
FOR WOMEN. 137 
 
 the universities of Great Britain and 
 Canada offer full opportunity and privi- 
 lege to women ; while those not regu- 
 larly opened to them grant, in most 
 cases, an enjoyment of their advan- 
 tages in a more or less irregular and 
 informal way. In Germany, Austria, 
 and Hungary women are allowed a 
 more or less definite standing as stu- 
 dents, and more or less access, by 
 special permission, to opportunities not 
 regularly granted. Russia is the one 
 country in Europe where the universi- 
 ties are strictly and absolutely closed 
 to women, and even there plans are 
 forming to provide medical instruction 
 for them. 
 
 Not only is the field thus widely 
 opened, but ample provision is made 
 to help the student to enter it who 
 
I38 COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 has the ability but not the means to 
 do so. Each college on the list of 
 the Federation of Graduate Clubs of- 
 fers, with one or two exceptions, from 
 four to forty fellowships and scholar- 
 ships, a large proportion of which are 
 open to women exclusively, or to wo- 
 men on the same terms as to men; 
 while other fellowships and scholarships 
 for women are offered by societies and 
 private persons interested in the en- 
 couragement of research. In some of 
 the foreign universities also, scholar- 
 ships and fellowships are to be com- 
 peted for by women equally with men. 
 It would seem, then, that any woman 
 who wishes to pursue advanced work 
 need not be hindered in her desire by 
 lack of means or opportunity. That 
 they are taking advantage of the oc- 
 
FOR WOMEN. 139 
 
 casion is amply evident. The register 
 of the Federation of Graduate Clubs 
 for 1896-97 shows that of 3,024 stu- 
 dents engaged in graduate work dur- 
 ing 1895-96 in the twenty-four colleges 
 of its membership, 650, or 21 per cent 
 of the entire number, were women, — a 
 good showing when we consider how 
 many influences are at work to keep 
 women from following such a career, 
 and how lately they have gone into it. 
 This leaves out of account, of course, 
 all those, many in number, who spent 
 the year in graduate study abroad. 
 
 From the membership-list of the As- 
 sociation of Collegiate Alumnae, a soci- 
 ety composed of women-graduates from 
 several representative colleges, may 
 be learned something not only of the 
 present strength of the movement, but 
 
I4O COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 of its rate of increase. While in 1884 
 the proportion of M. A.'s to the total 
 membership, which includes holders of 
 the bachelor's, master's, and doctor's 
 degree, was 7 per cent, in 1894 the M. 
 A.'s made up 11 per cent of the entire 
 number ; and while in the former year 
 the proportion of Ph. D.'s to the total 
 was the very inconsiderable one of ^ 
 per cent, it had mounted by 1894 to 2 
 per cent, a rate of increase which, com- 
 pared with that of the M. A.'s, shows 
 not only an absolute gain for grad- 
 uate study in general, but a relative 
 gain for that kind of graduate study 
 which means research, and for which 
 the doctor's degree is the appropriate 
 reward. 
 
 The growth of graduate study in this 
 country has been so rapid that we have 
 
FOR WOMEN. I4I 
 
 as yet had scarcely time to see what it 
 really means to the student and to the 
 community, either in its social or its 
 intellectual results. 
 
 Looking at this new development first 
 on its social side, we notice that the 
 graduate group exercises less control 
 over its individual member than is exer- 
 cised by the undergraduate group over 
 its member. The graduate group, since 
 it is made up of members who are con- 
 stantly coming and going, cannot ac- 
 quire a distinct enough character of its 
 own to impress the incoming member 
 very strongly; and for the same reason 
 of perpetual migration the graduate stu- 
 dent herself is not with her group long 
 enough to become thoroughly imbued 
 with its character, even if it had one. 
 Then, too, the average graduate stu- 
 
I42 COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 dent is older than the average under- 
 graduate, and has lost something of 
 the plasticity of youth that renders the 
 undergraduate amenable to group con- 
 trol. Having already formed herself 
 after a certain type of character and 
 manner in the undergraduate group of 
 which she once formed a part, she is 
 less ready to take on new impressions. 
 Furthermore, by the very nature of her 
 pursuit, she is more isolated from the 
 group than the undergraduate; she is 
 no longer, like the undergraduate, trav- 
 ersing the common ground of already 
 acquired knowledge, but is trying to 
 cut for herself a path through an un- 
 trodden wilderness. 
 
 Under present conditions the grad- 
 uate group, with its feeble control over 
 its members, and its feeble support for 
 
FOR WOMEN. I43 
 
 them in an organized popular opinion, 
 is thrown in daily contact with a larger, 
 more powerful, and more highly organ- 
 ized undergraduate group, which as- 
 sumes to itself the representation of 
 the " college-spirit " of the institution in 
 which it is established. The graduate 
 is often from another institution, and is 
 by that very fact a stranger to the un- 
 dergraduate just as the freshman is. 
 Even when continuing study in her own 
 college, the graduate student is more or 
 less out of touch with the undergraduate 
 body, owing to her loss of classmates, 
 new association with strangers, and 
 change of interests. 
 
 The graduate student, then, becomes 
 the object of scrutiny and criticism to 
 the undergraduate, sometimes not of the 
 pleasantest kind. The undergraduate 
 
144 COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 is not in sympathy with the peculiar 
 interests of the graduate, dislikes her 
 alien type of character, and even dis- 
 counts her intellectual acquirements be- 
 cause they were gathered somewhere 
 else. 
 
 Thus the anomalous condition of 
 things is presented in which the grad- 
 uate student, who should be logically 
 the highest type of the college-woman, 
 is placed at a comparative disadvantage 
 in college opinion ; and the higher de- 
 gree, which should stand for more than 
 the lower degree, is a much less potent 
 passport to alumna fellowship. The 
 " alumna " of a college is pre-eminently 
 its " bachelor " graduate ; its doctors, if 
 without its lower degree, are admitted 
 to association usually only after pro- 
 longed discussion as to whether one 
 
FOR WOMEN. I45 
 
 who has been only a graduate student 
 can in fairness be considered " one of 
 us." The graduate student herself, on 
 the other hand, feels that she belongs 
 especially to the college-group she was 
 first associated with ; and "my college " 
 is for her always the one at which she 
 took her first degree. 
 
 With all her loyalty to her first col- 
 lege, this non-recognition by the college 
 where she goes for graduate study is 
 not a little unpleasant to the graduate 
 student as a personal matter ; it should 
 also be unpleasant to her for the sake 
 of the class she represents, and the ob- 
 jects she is working for. Every time 
 any single graduate student is lowered 
 in popular estimation, whether from her 
 own fault or not, the type of the grad- 
 uate student in general is lowered, and 
 
I46 COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 the ideal of graduate study is belittled 
 and degraded. Each graduate worker, 
 then, should feel resting upon her a 
 serious responsibility to prevent as far 
 as she possibly can any cause, or even 
 excuse, for such a discrimination against 
 her class. The feeling at the bottom 
 of this discrimination is, however, so 
 firmly based in real conditions, and is, 
 in part, so justifiable, that it cannot be 
 changed simply by calling it narrow 
 and illogical, but by changing the con- 
 ditions. 
 
 The graduate student from outside 
 has usually come from a comparatively 
 small, comparatively isolated, college to 
 a larger and more highly organized 
 one ; the type she has assimilated her- 
 self to in the institution she has left 
 often fails in some desirable particu- 
 
FOR WOMEN. I47 
 
 lars by comparison with the type she 
 finds in the institution she has come 
 to. She has, in fact, come there to 
 better her opportunities for intellectual 
 improvement. Why should she not 
 also profit by the opportunity for im- 
 provement in other lines, rather than 
 hold herself aloof, returning an aggres- 
 sive assertion of her own individuality 
 to the unwelcome assimilating influences 
 of the new group? The graduate stu- 
 dent may often learn something valuable 
 from the undergraduate, and there is no 
 reason why she should be ashamed of 
 doing so. 
 
 One cause of the unfortunate diver- 
 gence between the graduate and the 
 undergraduate is to be found in the 
 abuse of "collegiate courtesy," prac- 
 tised by colleges only too often, where- 
 
I48 COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 by the student is admitted to graduate 
 work on an A. B. degree that represents 
 attainment about on a level with that 
 reached in the sophomore class of the 
 college she has come to. The line can- 
 not perhaps be drawn strictly by the 
 college ; but the student at least can 
 draw one for herself, by entering those 
 undergraduate classes where she really 
 belongs, although she might, legally and 
 technically, take her place as a gradu- 
 ate student. By waiving, for the pres- 
 ent, her graduate rights she will not 
 only secure the fullest benefit of the 
 purely intellectual advantages offered 
 her, but also of the no less useful les- 
 sons to be learned from intercourse 
 with the social group. 
 
 The matter will also in part be rem- 
 edied when, as graduate study becomes 
 
FOR WOMEN. I49 
 
 more and more a matter of course, and 
 more and more one of many choices 
 taken for fitness and special taste, the 
 curiosity hunter, who is always on hand 
 at the opening up of anything new, 
 ceases to infest our graduate schools 
 with the indefinite expectation of some 
 real good, and the definite expectation 
 of notoriety. The undergraduate, rooted 
 for four years in one spot, trained in 
 the proprieties and conservatisms of 
 life by an ever-watchful "college-opin- 
 ion," will naturally look with suspicion 
 upon what may be called the " college 
 rounder," who wanders from college to 
 college, seeking opportunities that are 
 new or but irregularly offered ; from 
 professor to professor, seeking inter- 
 views and special privileges ; who prides 
 herself upon the number of unconven- 
 
I50 COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 tional things she has done and unwill- 
 ing doors she has forced, and comes 
 home again with nothing but the re- 
 membrance of haunting so many differ- 
 ent lecture-rooms, and gazing upon so 
 many famous personages. It is sad 
 when a student of this type strays be- 
 yond the bounds of her own country ; 
 for she can do more to cast discredit 
 in foreign lands on the woman-student 
 as a class than the quiet, unobtrusive 
 worker can hope to counteract in a 
 long time, with all her faithfulness and 
 accomplishment. 
 
 On the purely intellectual side of her 
 life also, the graduate student will have 
 some problems to solve, and will meet 
 with some perhaps unexpected condi- 
 tions. The ideal of production so in 
 the ascendant in the graduate school 
 
FOR WOMEN. 151 
 
 to-day possesses student and profes- 
 sor alike. The undergraduate, who was 
 fond of study in her college-course, 
 when study meant acquirement, looks 
 forward with eagerness to equal delight 
 in the graduate school, where study 
 means progress and discovery ; the pro- 
 fessor, who has conducted with success 
 the work of giving definite information 
 in the undergraduate department, takes 
 his first opportunity to open up work 
 that shall end in original production. 
 
 The results of this wholesale entry 
 into the field are bound to be in many 
 cases disappointing. Experience seems 
 to show that there is a " law of dimin- 
 ishing returns " in mental as well as in 
 material agriculture. It seems as if the 
 more there are at the work of research, 
 the less there is accomplished. An ori- 
 
152 COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 ginal thinker has opened up a new- 
 subject; he has announced a great dis- 
 covery or formulated a brilliant gener- 
 alization. Crowds of followers arise, 
 attracted by the master's power, who 
 hope to take up the theme where he 
 left it off, and to carry it out in count- 
 less applications and suggestions ; but, 
 having taken up the work, they find 
 themselves, only too often, merely re- 
 peating the master's words in other 
 phraseology, elaborating the master's 
 thought in small and unimportant de- 
 tails, or devoting year after year and 
 labor upon labor to showing that the 
 great discovery is imperfect, or the bril- 
 liant generalization false. 
 
 The stubborn fact can never be got 
 over, nor reasoned out of the way, that 
 not every student is capable of origi- 
 
FOR WOMEN. 153 
 
 nal production, and not every instruc- 
 tor is capable of guiding and directing 
 the process. Two dangers are run 
 under these circumstances in trying to 
 force production in the graduate school : 
 one, that where the attempt is made 
 to regulate it closely, the course osten- 
 sibly for progress will become one 
 merely of acquirement through the in- 
 ability of the student or the instructor 
 to get beyond the operation of collect- 
 ing in one dust-heap material labo- 
 riously gathered out of many ; the 
 other, that if the attempt at close reg- 
 ulation is not made, the graduate stu- 
 dent will roam about, uncared for by 
 a helpless professor who does not know 
 what to do with her, to look vainly for 
 an inspiration that persistently refuses 
 to descend. The contrasting methods 
 
154 COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 of close direction and of occasional sug- 
 gestion, each with its advantages and 
 usefulness under competent leadership 
 and with competent followers, are 
 equally useless when employed by the 
 uninspired instructor with the unorigi- 
 nal student. 
 
 In view of all these considerations, 
 may it be said that graduate study in 
 general is worth while ? and is it a 
 kind of effort to be encouraged by the 
 community, or not? With due regard 
 to its conditions and limitations, it is 
 decidedly worth while. The graduate 
 student has a great work to do for a 
 society that is growing every day more 
 and more complex, and must depend 
 more and more upon the painstaking 
 researches of specialists for its basis 
 of action. Although the amount of 
 
FOR WOMEN. I55 
 
 valuable product from graduate study 
 may not increase proportionately to the 
 increase in number of those engaged 
 in turning it out ; yet little by little 
 some gain is made, and as a result of 
 successive buildings and demolitions, 
 the structure of human knowledge, our 
 common inheritance, rises slowly up- 
 ward. 
 
 By taking some pains, the graduate 
 student may make his or her usefulness 
 to the community greater than it is 
 now. Next to the originality of his 
 work, the graduate worker prides him- 
 self upon its non-utilitarian character. 
 Pure scholarship, he thinks, has noth- 
 ing to do with the directly and materi- 
 ally useful ; and it is perhaps well, even 
 for ultimate utility's sake, that he has 
 this idea. But there is danger that in 
 
156 COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 throwing off all restraints of direct and 
 material utility, the worker will turn out 
 a product of absolute and total inutility 
 to any one in any way. The scholar's 
 work must in some way and at some 
 time enter helpfully into the thought of 
 the world about him, otherwise it is 
 like a dream in the sleeper's mind, 
 beautiful and delightful to him, but 
 quite without reality because quite with- 
 out existence for others. 
 
 Another cause for the failure of the 
 student's work to enter real existence 
 as part of the general world of thought 
 is an over-importance attributed to spe- 
 cialization, and a misapprehension of 
 what true specialization is. The mis- 
 taken idea is held that specialization 
 consists in finding out about one small 
 thing thoroughly by resolutely shutting 
 
FOR WOMEN. 157 
 
 the eyes to everything else. A fruit- 
 ful specialization can, however, proceed 
 only upon a broad ground of general 
 knowledge, that enables the worker to 
 consider his problem in its relation to 
 other problems, and thus to keep that 
 sense of proportion and balance so ne- 
 cessary if even the bare correctness of 
 the results of investigation are to be 
 assured, to say nothing of their impor- 
 tance or appositeness to the needs of a 
 time. 
 
 The graduate student should be sure, 
 when she takes up her problem, that it 
 is a problem worth something to some- 
 body to have solved ; she should then 
 take a little care over the form and 
 finish of her solution. Is there any 
 reason why the report of an investiga- 
 tion should be released from the rules 
 
I58 COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 of clear and correct expression ? Is 
 there any reason why the thesis should 
 be the synonym for all dulness ? Is 
 there any reason why the student should 
 scorn the pleasantly flowing style as su- 
 perficial, and admire the obscure and 
 crabbed as an indication of depth? It 
 is safe to assume that there are few 
 members of our graduate schools, and 
 few instructors in them, who are neces- 
 sarily unintelligible simply from the 
 closeness and compactness, the weight 
 and profundity, of their thought. If 
 even a little more care and attention 
 than at present were given to form by 
 the graduate worker, a most gratifying 
 increase in general interest in and re- 
 spect for her work would follow, quite 
 disproportionate to the slight extra la- 
 bor involved. When all research work- 
 
FOR WOMEN. I59 
 
 ers follow that plan, we shall cease to 
 hear the demand from an intelligent 
 but wearied public for some Alexan- 
 drian fire to ravage the thesis-heaps in 
 our libraries, and the investigator will 
 take his rightful place as an influence 
 in the thought of his time. 
 
 Graduate study, then, if the worker 
 does not quite ignore and despise the 
 community and its needs and tastes, 
 may be found a most useful form of 
 activity, to be fostered and encouraged 
 as a valuable source of help to the 
 community in times of much perplexity 
 and doubt. 
 
 To the worker herself, also, the work 
 is worth while. The worker with a dis- 
 tinct calling will never even ask the 
 question ; she does not choose her work, 
 but is chosen, and could not do other- 
 
l60 COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 wise if she would. The joy of the work 
 is her daily satisfaction, and all she 
 asks, to be entirely content, is a rea- 
 sonable excuse in public opinion of her 
 usefulness in pursuing it. 
 
 For the student in general, even with- 
 out special call to the work, it is worth 
 while to find out, through acquaintance 
 with the strict and careful methods of 
 the graduate school, what accuracy 
 really means, and to learn, even by the 
 disappointments and negations of her 
 own work, how little the great bulk of 
 so-called " science " and " ascertained 
 fact " really amounts to. 
 
 It is worth while to the student to 
 study after graduation, even without the 
 aim of original production. If the stu- 
 dent who finds herself without sponta- 
 neous and constraining impulses toward 
 
FOR WOMEN. l6l 
 
 production should make up her mind to 
 drop, frankly and fully, all effort that 
 way, study with simple acquirement as 
 its end would be worth her while, for 
 the satisfaction and improvement she 
 gets from it, for the further ripening it 
 brings about of a culture begun in the 
 undergraduate world, and for the feel- 
 ing it gives of being more fully at home 
 with the best and finest. 
 
1 62 COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 ALUMNA ASSOCIATIONS. 
 
 THAT the college-woman, trained for 
 four years or more in the college- 
 group and assimilated in greater or less 
 degree to its ideal, should, upon leaving 
 that group at graduation, or after grad- 
 uate study, unite herself again with 
 others of like character and training, is 
 not altogether to be explained as a 
 result of definite calculation of advan- 
 tage. A deeper feeling and impulse is 
 at the bottom of it. That " conscious- 
 ness of kind," which is the basis of all 
 human association, will draw the col- 
 lege-graduate to her like in a bond of 
 sympathy and intimate relation irre- 
 
FOR WOMEN. 163 
 
 spective of any actual task she hopes 
 to accomplish, or any stated benefit she 
 looks for. Human life, so far as we 
 can trace it out, began in the group, 
 and it has been lived in groups ever 
 since. No sooner was the individual 
 evolved as a product of group action 
 and reaction than he began to unite 
 with other individuals in groups again. 
 The bond of the kinship group into 
 which one came at birth by no choice 
 of his own was broken, only to be re- 
 placed by the deliberately assumed 
 bond of the group based, not upon like- 
 ness of blood and descent, but upon 
 likeness of thought, taste, and personal 
 character. 
 
 By merging himself in the group, the 
 individual does not lose his own per- 
 sonality, but seems to find it more com- 
 
164 COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 plete. He feels an indefinite expansion 
 of himself and his powers in association 
 with others like himself. The mere 
 membership-roll of the group he belongs 
 to affects his imagination strongly ; the 
 large body thus indicated to the eye rep- 
 resents a force that brings to the mem- 
 ber an exhilarating sense of potential 
 power, which is in no way affected by 
 the frequent experience that in hard fact 
 the society accomplishes little and the 
 single member nothing at all. 
 
 The name of his group represents 
 more to the member than simply a 
 convenient mark of identification; it is 
 a centre about which cluster all sorts of 
 vague, indefinite, emotional associations. 
 The power of the Name over the minds 
 and feelings of men is the subject of 
 a long and suggestive chapter in social 
 
FOR WOMEN. 165 
 
 and individual psychology. The name 
 of the person we know does not call 
 up in our minds simply the exact sum 
 of all those definite qualities that we 
 have observed in him from time to 
 time, and that have had their share in 
 making up our idea of him; it brings 
 before consciousness a sort of com- 
 posite image made up of certain pre- 
 dominant elements in the long sum of 
 successively observed qualities, with a 
 general background of the less notice- 
 able elements blended indistinguishably 
 together, the whole suffused with the 
 general emotional tone that some lead- 
 ing trait in the individual calls up. 
 That which we know under the Name, 
 in short, is not a photographic copy of 
 bald reality, but a work of art, present- 
 ing its object as a harmonious whole, 
 
l66 COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 with selection of detail, with high lights 
 and strong shadows, in the glowing at- 
 mosphere of a predominant emotion. 
 
 The Name symbolizes rather than re- 
 presents, and depends for its power 
 upon the freedom with which each one 
 may construct that symbol out of the ele- 
 ments that appeal to him most strongly. 
 What emotional power is evoked by the 
 name of the abstract idea embodied in 
 doctrine, — religious, philosophical, or 
 social! It is not the simple proposi- 
 tion setting forth the bare, logical mean- 
 ing of a doctrine that men work and 
 die for, but that inextricably blended 
 complex of idea and emotion that each 
 man for himself has constructed upon 
 it. So the group-name, whether it is 
 the name of one's country, one's family, 
 or the artificial group the individual has 
 
FOR WOMEN. 167 
 
 elected to belong to, means not merely 
 a summing up of its actual elements, 
 objects, and methods ; it is a centre of 
 personality, whole and compelling with 
 the power of personality, to which alle- 
 giance is given, and for which affection 
 is felt, as for that other symbolic image 
 called up by a name which we know 
 as the individual. 
 
 The individual not only feels an in- 
 creased motive to activity in working in 
 the group from the effect it has on his 
 emotions, but he finds by association 
 with it an increased power of accom- 
 plishing what he wants to. The group 
 as a whole shares a common purpose, 
 so its individual members do not waste 
 their efforts by pulling each a different 
 way; the group has a common char- 
 acter, so that the methods adopted by 
 
l68 COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 its members are harmonious, and fit in 
 together to the best advantage for the 
 common good. 
 
 The group as an instrument of power 
 is, besides, more effective than the in- 
 dividual, by reason of its influence 
 upon the outside community, which feels, 
 as the group-member does, the force of 
 the collective personality. The collec- 
 tive body carries dignity and weight 
 in the public estimation ; it is felt as 
 a distinct element to be reckoned with. 
 What it says will be listened to with 
 more respect than the expressions of so 
 many detached individuals, and what 
 it asks for it is more likely to get 
 than would the same number of per- 
 sons not united in such a group. 
 
 For some such reasons as these the 
 woman-graduate who has, in answer to 
 
FOR WOMEN. 169 
 
 a natural impulse, united with her kind 
 in the alumnae association, will find in 
 it an effective and delightful means of 
 enlarging and directing her activities. 
 
 In the alumnae-group the alumna 
 finds again, with more or less com- 
 pleteness, the familiar college atmos- 
 phere, and renews, to greater or less 
 degree, that consciousness of herself, 
 somewhat dimmed perhaps by inter- 
 course with the community at large, 
 as distinctively the "college-woman." 
 She finds in it, too, an important ad- 
 ditional means of education ; for, while 
 the alumnae association continues to a 
 certain extent the general influence ex- 
 erted by the college-group, its emphasis 
 is different. In the alumnae association 
 the union is not so close, group-control 
 is not so complete, as in the college- 
 
I/O COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 group. Its members are more in touch 
 with the world, and more occupied with 
 outside interests ; they have had a 
 chance to test the applicability of group- 
 teaching in the community outside the 
 group ; they are more ready to admit 
 the result of individual experience. 
 
 The college has already tended to 
 broaden character by destroying local 
 prejudice and peculiarity ; it has already 
 taught individual tolerance, although 
 by a sort of group intolerance. These 
 processes go further in the alumnae 
 association. In the college-group were 
 united representatives of different lo- 
 calities and different social classes ; in 
 the alumnae-group of one college are 
 united, besides these, members repre- 
 senting different ages, different experi- 
 ences, and different periods of college 
 
FOR WOMEN. 171 
 
 development. The alumnae-group of va- 
 rious colleges brings together represen- 
 tatives of all these unlikenesses, and 
 furthermore, of the differing individu- 
 alities of their separate colleges, and 
 yet, uniting them all, is the common 
 bond of like training and interest, and 
 the common ideal of " the college." 
 In this broader association, members 
 feel the impulse to work for the highest 
 and best, regardless of local, social, or 
 temporal limitations, and supported by 
 the common consciousness of warm in- 
 terest and attachment to a common 
 cause through a wide and numerous 
 circle. 
 
 What such an association may be, 
 and can do, both for its own members 
 and for the community at large, may be 
 illustrated in a brief survey of the 
 
172 COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 growth and activities of the Associa- 
 tion of Collegiate Alumnae, founded in 
 1882, at a time when collegiate training 
 for women, even in its undergraduate 
 stage, was as yet a new and doubtful 
 experiment. Of the four colleges ex- 
 clusively for women now represented in 
 its membership, Vassar, although the 
 pioneer, had graduated but thirteen 
 classes, Smith and Wellesley had grad- 
 uated but three classes each, while the 
 fourth, Bryn Mawr, was not as yet 
 opened. 
 
 The college- worn an at that time was 
 not only a relatively small element in 
 the community, but a relatively isolated 
 one. She was looked upon in general 
 as a curious artificial product, good 
 for school-teaching possibly, but prob- 
 ably spoiled for other uses. As for fur- 
 
FOR WOMEN. 173 
 
 ther study, involving, as was generally 
 thought, further removal from every- 
 day life, that was distinctly not to be 
 thought of by her, since it was a vast in- 
 dulgence that had permitted her to use 
 so much time in getting that extrava- 
 gant luxury, the bachelor's degree. 
 
 To support the woman-graduate in 
 the ideals formed during college-life, 
 and to help her to apply them in the 
 life of the community, the Association 
 of Collegiate Alumnse was founded, 
 with an initial membership of sixty-six, 
 made up of graduates from eight dif- 
 ferent institutions, — Oberlin College, 
 Vassar College, Cornell University, the 
 Universities of Michigan and Wiscon- 
 sin, Boston University, Smith College, 
 and Wellesley College ; to-day its mem- 
 bership is above two thousand, and 
 
174 COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 represents fifteen different colleges and 
 universities. 
 
 No cast-iron plan of work and organi- 
 zation was laid down in the beginning 
 for the society ; so that one may see in 
 its development the natural reflection 
 of contemporary conditions, and of the 
 spontaneously felt needs of its mem- 
 bers. The purposes of the Association 
 were broadly stated at the first meeting 
 thus : — 
 
 " The members have organized in order better 
 to utilize their privileges in personal education, 
 and to perform their duty in respect to popular 
 education." 
 
 The first important topic considered 
 was the health of women-students, in 
 direct response to the great interest 
 taken by the general public in that as- 
 
FOR WOMEN. 175 
 
 pect of the higher education for women. 
 It shows how very new and strange, 
 even then, was the idea of the feminine 
 brain as anything more than a merely 
 ornamental appendage, that the general 
 feeling should picture a complete wreck 
 of the whole physical economy of wo- 
 man as a result of her effort to make 
 serious use of this doubtful mental 
 power. In order to replace a vague 
 general impression by some accurate 
 knowledge of the matter, the Associa- 
 tion sent to a large number of college 
 graduates a list of questions, which were 
 to be answered by each one out of 
 her own personal experience as to her 
 health before entering college, during 
 the college-life, and after graduation, to 
 inherited tendencies, surrounding con- 
 ditions, and so forth. Over seven hun- 
 
I76 COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 dred answers were received, which were 
 tabulated by a professional statistician 
 not connected with the Association, to 
 insure the greatest possible correctness 
 and absence of partisan bias. 
 
 The results of this investigation were 
 embodied in the Sixteenth Annual Re- 
 port of the Massachusetts Bureau of 
 Statistics of Labor, and may be summed 
 up, in their most general form, in the 
 words of that report, as follows : — 
 
 " Female graduates of our colleges and uni- 
 versities do not seem to show, as the result of 
 their college duties and studies, any marked dif- 
 ference in general health likely to be reported 
 by an equal number of women engaged in other 
 kinds of work, or, in fact, of women generally, 
 without regard to occupation followed." 
 
 Some of the special results were in- 
 teresting. It was found that while 
 
FOR WOMEN. I77 
 
 19.58 per cent of the whole number 
 answering had deteriorated in health 
 during the college-course, 21.13 per 
 cent had shown an improvement, while 
 the remaining 59.29 per cent were prac- 
 tically unaffected. Of assigned causes 
 of ill-health, ante-collegiate conditions, 
 inherited tendencies, constitutional pre- 
 dispositions, etc., played the largest 
 part, neglect of the conditions of phys- 
 ical well-being the next, and strictly 
 mental exertion the least of all. Finally 
 it may be mentioned that the health 
 record of children of alumnae was found 
 to be exceptionally high, and the death- 
 rate notably low. By carrying through 
 this investigation in such a painstaking 
 and non-partisan manner, the Associ- 
 ation rendered a valuable service to the 
 college and to the community as well, 
 
178 COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 in relieving the popular mind of its 
 apprehensions regarding the effect of 
 college training on the health of the 
 woman-student. 
 
 Along the same line of interest the 
 Association undertook to find out what 
 the colleges were doing for the physical 
 training of their students, and published 
 the results of their inquiries in a sched- 
 ule that surprises us to-day, — accus- 
 tomed as we are to the elaborate and 
 complete preparations made in our col- 
 leges for physical training, athletic 
 sports, and so on, — by the slenderness 
 of provision it shows as then made for 
 such things. 
 
 The health of girls in preparatory 
 schools was also the subject of discus- 
 sion and investigation by the Associa- 
 tion, and certain conditions desirable 
 
FOR WOMEN. 179 
 
 for the physical well-being of students 
 were stated in a set of recommendations 
 that was sent around widely to schools 
 and to parents. There is probably no 
 doubt but that the greater attention 
 paid in colleges and schools of the 
 present day to physical training and 
 other requisites to physical health is in 
 no small degree due to the interest and 
 work of this Association. 
 
 Next in importance to the question of 
 health in the public mind was the ques- 
 tion of occupation for the woman-gradu- 
 ate. Let it be granted that she succeeds 
 in coming out of college with unim- 
 paired health and vigor, of what use is 
 her training to be to her in the practical 
 work of earning a living ? was a fre- 
 quent query. The subject of occupa- 
 tions, of interest to the graduate herself 
 
l80 COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 also in a very pressing way, received 
 early attention from the Association. 
 Information was sought by it as to lines 
 of work, qualifications necessary and 
 desirable for engaging in them, and re- 
 muneration to be gained from them. A 
 local branch of the Association carried 
 on for two years a special study of occu- 
 pations, with particular consideration of 
 talent, preliminary education, special 
 training, — how and where obtained, — 
 demand, remuneration, advantages, and 
 disadvantages. Another local branch 
 studied through a season the subject of 
 women's wages, and the general asso- 
 ciation took up the same study. An 
 investigation was made into conditions 
 of wage-earning of women who had re- 
 ceived collegiate or other special train- 
 ing beyond the grammar-school course, 
 
FOR WOMEN. l8l 
 
 with reference to actual service ren- 
 dered, length of continuance in a place, 
 actual rate of wages received, and com- 
 parative rates of wages of men render- 
 ing service in corresponding positions. 
 The results of this investigation were 
 published, as the health statistics had 
 been, by the Massachusetts Bureau of 
 the Statistics of Labor. As a practical 
 feature of the same general work, the 
 Association established a Bureau of Oc- 
 cupations for the purpose of putting 
 high-class, specialized talent in commu- 
 nication with those who wished to secure 
 its services. 
 
 Another line of work taken up by the 
 Association was the encouragement of 
 study after graduation. It established 
 clubs for regular study in subjects al- 
 ready pursued in the college, and also 
 
1 82 COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 in subjects of growing importance hith- 
 erto neglected, or omitted altogether 
 in the college-course. Notable among 
 these latter were the social sciences, 
 then receiving much less attention than 
 now even in the colleges for men. 
 
 Work done in groups of graduates 
 more or less occupied with other mat- 
 ters, and with more or less guidance 
 from capable leaders, was not, however, 
 enough to fulfil the highest ideal of 
 graduate study. Devotion of the entire 
 time, the instruction and guidance of 
 acknowledged masters and discoverers, 
 was necessary for that. The Associa- 
 tion took much pains to bring before its 
 members such information as was to be 
 had concerning opportunities offered in 
 universities, both in this country and 
 abroad, for graduate study. In 1889 
 
FOR WOMEN. 183 
 
 the Association founded two fellowships, 
 to be awarded annually to the winners 
 in a competition before committees of 
 experts. These fellowships encouraged 
 application to the higher studies, not 
 only by enabling two persons yearly to 
 take advantage of the best opportuni- 
 ties for graduate study offered here and 
 abroad, but by inducing many more, in 
 preparation for the competition, to take 
 up advanced work, which, once begun, 
 was apt to be continued in default of 
 the fellowship by some other means. 
 The last Report of the Committee on 
 Fellowships (1896) shows that the har- 
 vest of original research and investiga- 
 tion brought forth by that competition 
 is rich and promising far beyond the 
 bounds of recognition in fellowships, 
 and that the record made in foreign 
 
184 COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 universities by the holders of fellow- 
 ships is honorable and gratifying. 
 
 As the Association grew, changes in 
 organization were bound to occur. In 
 the first years of the Association's ex- 
 istence all accessible woman-graduates 
 were none too many to form an effec- 
 tive working association ; and the spirit 
 of the institutions to be classed as col- 
 leges, even with a fairly broad allow- 
 ance as to what constituted a college, 
 was in sufficient contrast to that of 
 the outside community to be useful by 
 organization as a definite force. To- 
 day, however, if the Association were 
 to open its doors as widely as it did 
 formerly, it would not only become un- 
 wieldy from sheer force of numbers, but 
 by keeping to the old standard while 
 the general community has advanced, 
 
FOR WOMEN. 185 
 
 — owing partly to the wider diffusion 
 of collegiate training, — it would lose 
 that position of relative elevation above 
 the general level that gives it the right 
 and power of leadership. The Associ- 
 ation, then, has found it necessary to 
 make its conditions of membership more 
 and more strict, until now the seem- 
 ingly strange condition of affairs is 
 reached in which the Association is 
 found excluding from its membership 
 institutions usually ranked higher than 
 some already within it. Much of the 
 criticism that may be levelled at such 
 an apparent anomaly loses consider- 
 able of its force by the fact that this 
 very change of attitude and seeming 
 inconsistency is a token of growth and 
 health in the Association, showing that 
 it is mindful of its duty to improve it- 
 
1 86 COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 self as time goes on, and does not 
 linger in the immature stage of devel- 
 opment of its early years. 
 
 Another incident of growth is the 
 increasing localization of activities in 
 " branch " work. As the membership 
 of the Association grew, members were 
 more and more brought within conve- 
 nient meeting distance of one another 
 in and about the larger centres of pop- 
 ulation ; and the same change went on 
 that was seen in the development of 
 early man, — when the totem-brethren, 
 scattered at first among stranger-com- 
 munities by their peculiar marriage- 
 customs, yet recognizing the bond of 
 totem-kinship when chance wanderings 
 threw them in each other's way, became 
 localized in villages, and were no longer 
 simply kinsmen, but neighbors. 
 
FOR WOMEN. 187 
 
 By this growth of the Association, 
 several modifications of character were 
 brought about. The local group, or- 
 ganized as a " branch " of the general 
 society, began to interest itself in local 
 conditions as the general society could 
 not. It belonged to the soil, so to 
 speak, and became part of the com- 
 munity, with community duties and in- 
 terests, so that association work, which 
 had before been largely and necessarily 
 for the protection and advancement of 
 its members and of the collegiate class, 
 became more especially work for the 
 outside community. Indeed, the day 
 for such protection of a collegiate class 
 had about gone by, owing partly to the 
 very activity with which this Associa- 
 tion had already engaged in that work. 
 There is no longer any serious doubt 
 
1 88 COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 but that women are physically able to 
 pass through the college-course ; school- 
 teaching is no longer the sole occupa- 
 tion for the college-graduate ; the taste 
 for study has become general enough 
 so that distinctively collegiate clubs for 
 definite work of that kind are no longer 
 so necessary ; it is generally felt that 
 such reading and practice as could be 
 done profitably in a club without special 
 instruction will be done spontaneously 
 and as a matter of course by every cul- 
 tivated woman for herself ; university 
 after university has opened its doors to 
 women for graduate work, and fellow- 
 ship after fellowship is open to be com- 
 peted for by them. 
 
 The college-woman, in short, is by 
 this time abundantly able to take care 
 of herself, and of her own wants and 
 
FOR WOMEN. 189 
 
 needs ; she is at liberty, then, without 
 losing her distinctive character [and the 
 helpful influence that arises from it, to 
 go out into the community, and care for 
 its needs. 
 
 The local groups of members of the 
 Association formed into branches, while 
 they owed allegiance to the general as- 
 sociation and were expected to help in 
 its general work, were left free to follow 
 out such local work as appealed to them 
 most strongly. Each was able, then, to 
 take up what lay nearest to hand in its 
 own particular locality. 
 
 The general association had studied 
 closely "the college," — its ideals, its 
 standards, what it could and could not 
 do, how it could be best administered; 
 it had discussed what could be done by 
 the college-woman for the public schools, 
 
I9O COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 for the preparatory schools, for peda- 
 gogics, for industrial education, for the 
 English language. Measures had been 
 taken to influence legislative and other 
 action to prevent the springing up of 
 weak institutions claiming to be col- 
 leges, yet unfitted to do collegiate work ; 
 efforts had been exerted to induce al- 
 ready existing colleges to raise their 
 standards, and make their degrees 
 more valuable. The branches, follow- 
 ing along these lines, took up such of 
 the problems as were presented most 
 pressingly in their own neighborhoods. 
 Branches established near colleges and 
 universities have made these their spe- 
 cial centres of interest in one way and 
 another. They have contended against 
 low standards and against "machine" 
 rule ; they have worked to supply defi- 
 
FOR WOMEN. 191 
 
 ciencies in equipment ; they have af- 
 forded the aid of their sympathy and 
 co-operation to woman-students at work 
 near them. Other branches have bent 
 their energies to the reform of the pub- 
 lic school system, fighting machine rule 
 there also, securing the proper sanita- 
 tion of schoolhouses, and bringing about 
 the representation of the college-woman 
 in educational affairs by demanding 
 her presence on committees, governing 
 boards, and so forth, and by urging her 
 exemption as bearer of a college degree 
 from State or county examinations re- 
 quired to obtain a license for teaching. 
 One branch in a large city set on foot 
 and carried through successfully a pro- 
 ject for the establishment of a free pub- 
 lic library in the place, which had, to its 
 shame, been up to this time without 
 
192 COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 one; and this branch also did the fur- 
 ther notable work of securing collegiate 
 preparatory training for girls in the pub- 
 lic schools. Other branches, in com- 
 munities where the college as an object 
 of interest and aspiration to girls was 
 practically unknown, set themselves to 
 arouse interest and awaken aspiration 
 by various means. Prizes were offered 
 for the best passing of examinations in 
 college-preparatory studies ; meetings 
 were held to set forth to school-girls the 
 pleasures, advantages, and opportunities 
 of the collegiate life, and information 
 helpful in choosing a college was col- 
 lected and placed within easy reach. 
 
 The educational movement known 
 briefly as " University Extension " is 
 distinctly a work for others, — for the 
 general community, — and is noticeably 
 
FOR WOMEN. I93 
 
 prominent in branch work, and in the 
 maturely developed general association. 
 This subject appears to have been men- 
 tioned first in the general association 
 in 1889. Several of the branches have 
 taken up the work vigorously, establish- 
 ing course after course of lectures, and 
 extending their benefits to wider and 
 wider circles. 
 
 Another line of work for the better- 
 ment of the community in a broadly 
 educational way is carried on in the 
 College Settlement, and in this work 
 many branches have heartily engaged. 
 They have made contributions for run- 
 ning expenses, and have founded fellow- 
 ships in settlements already established ; 
 they have also founded the settlements 
 themselves where none existed before. 
 Certain branches have established home 
 
194 COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 libraries as centres of information and 
 instruction to the children of the poor ; 
 certain others, getting more and more 
 off the line of purely educational im- 
 provement into general social improve- 
 ment, have used their influence to have 
 more park room supplied in crowded 
 quarters of cities, and to have laws 
 passed protective of women and the 
 young in mercantile employments. 
 
 Looking over as a whole the work of 
 the college-woman organized in groups, 
 it is seen to be no mean achievement, 
 though the college-woman herself feels 
 that it is almost nothing in comparison 
 with what she would like to do. But 
 whether little or much has actually been 
 accomplished, the group of college- 
 women is a centre of power that may 
 not be exerted for a time, or that may 
 
FOR WOMEN. I95 
 
 be misdirected for a time, but that, if 
 the group is kept together, and its or- 
 ganization preserved intact, if even by- 
 social intercourse only, will some time 
 and on some occasion prove itself to be 
 just the one force needed to destroy 
 something wrong and undesirable, and 
 to establish something right and neces- 
 sary. 
 
 The especial function of the alumnas- 
 group seems to be to relate the college 
 to the community. The college works 
 to develop in its member the highest 
 possible perfection, regardless of the 
 general level of the community ; in 
 fact, it means to lift its student above 
 the community. The alumnae-group, 
 standing on the high level where the 
 college has brought it, does not so 
 much try, as a group, to reach higher 
 
I96 COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 levels itself, as to bring the community 
 after it up to its level. The college 
 exerts its influence upward and inward ; 
 the alumnae-group, in completest fulfil- 
 ment of its function, exerts its influence 
 downward and outward. 
 
 The alumnae-group is not capable of 
 continuing the work of the college in 
 the precise line of direction taken by 
 the college. Its members are too much 
 engaged outside the group to devote 
 their time as students in the group ; 
 for the same reason, those in the group 
 who by natural ability and training are 
 qualified to give strictly collegiate in- 
 struction in the group have not the 
 time to do so. Nor is the group as a 
 whole, since it is composed of the non- 
 professional as well as the professional, 
 the ordinary as well as the extraordi- 
 
FOR WOMEN. 197 
 
 nary, capable of conducting directly 
 with the best results the special tech- 
 nical processes of the higher education 
 for others. 
 
 Its power of general supervision and 
 criticism is its legitimate one ; and it 
 will probably be found, as years go by, 
 that it will do less and less in pursu- 
 ing, as a group, the original research 
 that is the especial work of the grad- 
 uate school ; less and less cf the per- 
 sonal direction of the higher studies 
 involved in the granting of fellowships ; 
 more and more in the way of seeing 
 that the colleges conduct their work 
 under the proper general conditions ; 
 that they preserve a high standard, and 
 sustain themselves financially in trying 
 to do so ; that the schools are what they 
 should be ; and that educational advan- 
 
I98 COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 tages are shared by the less fortunate 
 and the less enlightened. In doing 
 this the group will be doing the work 
 it can do best, and will be adding to 
 the work of the college something that 
 the college itself cannot do. 
 
FOR WOMEN. I99 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE COLLEGE-TRAINED MOTHER. 
 
 IT is a singular circumstance that 
 while " the mother " is such a sa- 
 cred object to popular feeling, the defi- 
 nite idea of her and her duties and 
 powers held in the popular mind is 
 found upon analysis to be an exceed- 
 ingly limited and not an especially ele- 
 vated one. In popular thought the 
 distinctively maternal qualities are com- 
 prised in the power of physical repro- 
 duction, and in a certain elemental and 
 primitive passion of protection and de- 
 fence of offspring, which is the psychi- 
 cal counterpart of the physical function, 
 and which works not as the result of 
 
200 COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 reason, calculation, or experience, but 
 by an intuition that is awakened at the 
 very birth of the child. For mother- 
 hood, then, in the general opinion, no 
 especial preparation is needed. Any 
 woman of fairly healthy body, what- 
 ever her disposition, ability, or train- 
 ing, is considered amply fitted for the 
 duties of a mother ; and, in fact, any 
 woman, who from lack of intelligence 
 or character seems likely to make a 
 failure of any sort of non-domestic 
 work, is usually advised to take upon 
 herself the wifely and maternal office 
 as the fitting opportunity of usefulness 
 and happiness for her. And yet to 
 motherhood in its highest sense be- 
 longs much more. It involves, in 
 addition to the physical passion and in- 
 stinct of animal life in general, a power 
 
FOR WOMEN. 20I 
 
 of rational and moral guidance and con- 
 trol peculiar to humanity, to be used 
 in the truly sacred work of lifting up 
 to humanity from the animal level that 
 crude lump of possibilities, the child. 
 This task is one of the most complex 
 and exacting known ; and for its accom- 
 plishment the mother, far from need- 
 ing no especial ability and preparation, 
 requires the most varied talent and the 
 most thorough training. 
 
 The peculiar fitness of the college- 
 woman for this function is largely over- 
 looked, owing, no doubt, to the cir- 
 cumstance that the popular idea of 
 motherhood is such a limited one. 
 With a broader idea in one's mind of 
 the mother's duties, it is easily seen 
 that the college exerts certain special in- 
 fluences particularly useful in preparing 
 
202 COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 the mother for her task. \xhe college- 
 woman will not, in the first place, enter 
 upon wifehood because she has nothing 
 else to do, nor will she be a mother by 
 accident. If she takes up those duties 
 it will be because she feels a special 
 inclination to them, that is in itself a 
 good sign that they will be lovingly and 
 carefully fulfilled. She will, besides, 
 realize the difficulty and complexity of 
 these duties. She has learned too much 
 of the intricacies of the human body, 
 the human mind, and human society, 
 to think that she can care properly for 
 a developing human creature, even a 
 "very little one," without a thorough 
 knowledge of conditions and circum- 
 stances. The college-woman studies 
 her child in mind and body. That 
 she succeeds in the latter branch is 
 
FOR WOMEN. 203 
 
 shown by the fact that her children 
 are healthier, and survive in greater 
 proportion to the number of births, than 
 children in the community as a whole. 
 The results of her study of the child's 
 mind cannot, in the nature of the case, 
 be formulated so definitely ; yet notwith- 
 standing the possible crudities, extrava- 
 gances, and false assumptions of " child- 
 study" as carried on to-day, there can 
 be no doubt that the effort really to find 
 out something of the laws of mental 
 growth and development in the child 
 will be followed by more useful results 
 than come from the careless ignorance 
 that there are any such laws, and the 
 careless persistence in their violation. 
 
 In taking up her work of parenthood, 
 the college-woman finds that those gen- 
 eral traits the college has tended to de- 
 
204 COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 velop in her own character are just the 
 ones fitted to give her power over her 
 child, and the means of dealing with 
 him. The instinctive maternal love of 
 the untrained mother will, it is true, 
 awaken in the child an answering re- 
 gard that beautifies his character, and 
 lifts it to higher levels. However un- 
 learned, undisciplined, and unwise it 
 may be, the loving mother-spirit is a 
 never-to-be-forgotten influence in the 
 child's life. But how often that spirit 
 is enfeebled in its effect by lack of 
 reason and control ! How often the 
 mother is belittled in her child's eyes 
 by the narrow prejudice, the personal 
 whim, the ignorant and foolish impulse, 
 that sway her, making the child half- 
 despise even while he loves her ! How 
 often she fails in her guidance of him 
 
FOR WOMEN. 205 
 
 because she feels and he feels that he 
 has really grown beyond her powers of 
 mind and character! The college-wo- 
 man has had offered her the possibility 
 of ridding herself of these belittling 
 characteristics. The mother, first of 
 all, must be absolutely and entirely 
 above the level of the child, strong in 
 the conscious power of control ; and 
 this the college-training, social and in- 
 tellectual, has given her the opportu- 
 nity to be. The college has tended to 
 develop in her a personality that can 
 stand in and for itself. She has learned 
 in the college to know and use herself ; 
 she has learned to know and to deal 
 with others in a spirit of sympathetic 
 comprehension and tolerance ; she has 
 learned to suppress personal whim and 
 personal exaction, and to regard wider 
 
206 COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 and higher interests than those that 
 centre in herself; her mind is trained 
 and stored so that she does not feel at 
 a disadvantage when confronted with 
 the growing and expanding mind of 
 the child. Such a mother, with char- 
 acter and opinions of her own, the 
 child respects as he could not the 
 mother who always looks to some one 
 else for her rule of action, — to her hus- 
 band, her social circle, or even her own 
 children, and has no opinions, or means 
 of forming any. 
 
 The college not only tends to give 
 the future mother a feeling of respect 
 for her task, and a power of character 
 to deal with it, but a special outfit of 
 acquirement for use in building up es- 
 pecial elements in the child's character. 
 The college, like the mother, has for its 
 
FOR WOMEN. 207 
 
 function not so much the fitting of its 
 pupil for some particular activity of life, 
 as for life in general ; not so much the 
 development of some one talent or fac- 
 ulty, as of the whole man or woman. 
 Both try to make the cultivation of 
 mind and character not a means to 
 some achievement or acquirement, but 
 an end in itself, desirable for its own 
 sake; both try to develop power in 
 general, leaving to definite occasions 
 the application of power. The college 
 tries to teach its pupil not merely to 
 know certain things, but to take up a 
 certain attitude of mind toward things 
 in general ; it tries to instil a certain 
 spirit that shall give meaning and 
 beauty to all acquirement, and to dif- 
 fuse a certain atmosphere in which all 
 objects of thought shall stand luminous 
 
208 COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 in their true relations. The formation 
 of tone and temper, of spirit and atmos- 
 phere, is also one of the most important 
 processes in the development of the 
 child. Whether for good or evil, this 
 process is begun at the very dawn of 
 intelligence, and is carried on under 
 every influence of home and surround- 
 ings that the child is subjected to. 
 Here, then, the college-trained mother 
 has her golden opportunity, — to prevent 
 from the beginning the growth of the 
 base and the trivial in spirit and atti- 
 tude of mind, and to foster the noble, 
 the generous, and the liberal. In our 
 time, the dangers of an exclusively ma- 
 terial civilization appear to be pressing 
 closer and closer upon us. We are 
 warned day by day of the evils and 
 harms of the purely mercantile spirit. 
 
FOR WOMEN. 209 
 
 We send our young men to the college 
 to get some acquaintance with and love 
 for the ideal before they are over- 
 whelmed in the bustle of the market- 
 place. Suppose, however, that each 
 child, boy or girl, had from earliest 
 youth daily contact with the ideal in 
 the person of a broadly trained mother, 
 would not the lesson be learned in a 
 way impossible otherwise ? would it not 
 be printed in characters that no after 
 influence could wholly efface? The 
 college-trained mother will teach her 
 son that there are higher ends in life 
 than money-making; she will teach her 
 daughter that there are other sources 
 of interest than dress and show, and 
 other occupations besides hunting for a 
 husband. She can give them personal 
 guidance in following out these higher 
 
2IO COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 interests. Her well-stocked mind is a 
 never-failing storehouse of resource for 
 occupying, amusing, and instructing 
 them, so that they need never fall into 
 that deadly vacancy which causes most 
 of the mischief, vice, and crime com- 
 mitted in the world. A child constantly 
 provided with something wholesome and 
 interesting to do, is with the greater 
 difficulty tempted into coarse and fool- 
 ish employments. 
 
 If the mother is prepared to con- 
 duct her child's education herself, as 
 the college-trained mother would be, 
 she is able to keep him at home, under 
 her own instruction, until some leading 
 traits of character are formed, and some 
 mental fibre established. From this 
 would come a great gain to the schools 
 as well as to the children themselves. 
 
FOR WOMEN. 211 
 
 Under present conditions, children en- 
 ter the schools with too little maturity 
 of mind and character to be dealt with 
 successfully in masses, as the teacher 
 must deal with them. The mother, in 
 the narrow circle of her little home- 
 school, knows every child with the most 
 intimate knowledge, and feels for it that 
 tender interest in its progress and wel- 
 fare that the teacher, with the best will 
 in the world, cannot feel for all her nu- 
 merous flock alike. She can give, as 
 the teacher cannot, that attention to 
 individual needs and wants, that equal 
 and spontaneous interest in each, that 
 is so necessary in the teaching of the 
 young child. Thus the child kept at 
 home during its earlier years of learn- 
 ing secures a more perfect development, 
 while the school, relieved of over-pres- 
 
212 COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 sure, can deal to greater advantage with 
 the pupils it retains, and can deal to 
 especially greater advantage with those 
 who come to it later after this careful 
 training at home. At a suitable period 
 in the child's life there is a distinct and 
 necessary educative influence to be 
 gained for him by sending him out be- 
 yond the bounds of home, to come in 
 contact to some extent with strangers, 
 and to be taught by them ; but this in- 
 fluence is as bad when exerted too soon, 
 as it is good when it comes as the natu- 
 ral sequel to proper home preparation. 
 
 What a race brought up by well- 
 disciplined mothers would be we can 
 barely imagine; since motherhood has 
 always been, and still is, so largely a 
 matter of accident and instinct. We 
 may see enough, however, to encourage 
 
FOR WOMEN. 213 
 
 us in thinking that such a race would 
 be an incalculable improvement on the 
 present one. It would, we may guess, 
 be strong and wholesome physically, 
 strong and clean morally, strong and 
 fine mentally ; it would spontaneously 
 and naturally take to the good influ- 
 ences in the world, and quietly ignore 
 and reject the bad ones, and so make 
 life not the fierce struggle it now is to 
 advance even a pace or two beyond 
 the manners and morals of the brute, 
 but a harmonious and delightful growth 
 into the more and more perfect man. 
 
214 COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE COLLEGE-WOMAN AS A SOCIAL 
 INFLUENCE. 
 
 THE nervous critic who objects to 
 the collegiate training of women 
 because, as he thinks, it materially les- 
 sens their chance of motherhood, and 
 so their usefulness to the community, 
 seems to forget that there are other 
 avenues than this one through which 
 women not only may, but are expected, 
 to influence the social whole for its 
 good. The mother's activity is not 
 strictly confined to the circle of her 
 home ; she has, besides, a place in the 
 community that she must fill according 
 to its requirements. The single woman, 
 
FOR WOMEN. 215 
 
 too, has laid upon her the burden of 
 social duties, that are made particularly- 
 exacting and heavy because she is com- 
 paratively free from family cares. 
 
 This general service of the commu- 
 nity as a whole is as important in its 
 place perhaps as the mother's work; 
 it is, possibly, as necessary that some 
 should attend to the well-being and 
 improvement oi>tho^e already in the 
 social grpufi, as that some should bring 
 into existence additional members for 
 it. In this former task the single wo- 
 man has her great and necessary func- 
 tion ; since she may come to it with 
 hands free to take hold wherever she 
 is needed, in a way that the mother, 
 busy, and rightly busy, at her own ap- 
 pointed work, cannot. If the college- 
 woman does not, then, in every instance 
 
2l6 COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 marry, it should be a cause of rejoicing, 
 not of alarm, to the community, which 
 is likely, on this account, to get a direct 
 and undivided service, much to its ad- 
 vantage. 
 
 If the training given in the college 
 is useful for the work of the mother, 
 it is no less useful as a preparation 
 for work for society at large. Looking 
 about at prevailing social conditions, 
 we see on every side opportunity to use, 
 and crying need for, the very gifts the 
 college-woman has to bestow. 
 
 The general fault of our civilization 
 is, that the people as a whole lack the 
 discrimination and taste necessary to 
 know the fine from the vulgar, the beau- 
 tiful from the ugly, so that they may 
 insist upon the one, and refuse to put 
 up with the other. Much that is de- 
 
FOR WOMEN. 217 
 
 basing and belittling in our public life 
 is due to the ignorance of anything 
 better. Much of our difficulty with the 
 great political problems that confront 
 us is due to the general lack of respect 
 for the expert in intricate matters, such 
 as finance and taxation, that call for 
 wide research and a disinterested spirit, 
 rather than for the suddenly reached 
 and emotionally guided conclusions of 
 the average unlettered citizen. The 
 college-man may go directly into the 
 political field if he wishes, and use his 
 influence there to teach directly that 
 sense for relative values that the col- 
 lege has already taught him ; the col- 
 lege-woman, if she may not do that, has 
 an opportunity to do something toward 
 bettering the general state of things by 
 helping to form a general opinion that 
 
2l8 COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 shall recognize these relative values, 
 and refuse to permit the unlearned to 
 carry on affairs that require learning, 
 the coarse and vulgar to arrange mat- 
 ters that require taste and cultivation, 
 or the mercenary and mean to conduct 
 business that calls for the purest integ- 
 rity and the strictest sense of honor. 
 
 It is our boast in this country that 
 we have no " classes ; " but by now cer- 
 tain broad contrasts are seen to exist 
 between social groups that enable us to 
 make certain rough distinctions on the 
 basis of differences more or less su- 
 perficial, more or less transitory and 
 ill-defined. A distinctively large-town 
 population has arisen, with its own spe- 
 cial characteristics, and offering its own 
 special problems ; a small-town popula- 
 tion is to be recognized with traits be- 
 
FOR WOMEN. 219 
 
 longing peculiarly to itself; a sparsely- 
 settled country district affords yet an- 
 other variety of the social group. De- 
 gree of wealth may also be taken as 
 a basis for distinction of social groups. 
 " The rich " and " the poor " are rela- 
 tive terms only, but they suggest certain 
 broad differences that appear clearly in 
 popular thought. For all these classes 
 the college-woman has something to do ; 
 so that in whatever community her lot 
 is cast, she need not feel that she is 
 out of place, or that her preparation 
 has been wasted. 
 
 In our great cities is to be found a 
 class of persons possessing large wealth, 
 but notoriously deficient in any rational 
 idea of disposing of it. The foreign 
 visitor records, as a first impression, 
 the lack of distinction, of charm, of 
 
220 COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 variety, in our so-called "highest cir- 
 cles." He observes a frank and un- 
 blushing reduction of everything to the 
 money standard. The most prominent 
 man or woman in this realm, he notices, 
 is the richest man or woman ; the de- 
 light of social entertainment is meas- 
 ured by its expense ; art, music, and lit- 
 erature are matters of money value, and 
 nowhere does he see that free and spon- 
 taneous enjoyment that comes from the 
 exercise of genuine intellect and taste. 
 
 The college-woman who mingles in 
 that society has perhaps the hardest 
 task of all, yet it is one worthy to be 
 undertaken. She has first to combat 
 the prejudice that is felt against the 
 traditional "blue-stocking," untidy in 
 dress, uncouth of manner, and heavy in 
 conversation. She must be of the 
 
FOR WOMEN. 221 
 
 world worldly in dress, appearance, and 
 manner before she can get a hearing; 
 she must employ the finest tact and 
 the most delicate discrimination. Sim- 
 ply by making herself liked and re- 
 ceived with pleasure in this materialistic 
 society, she is accomplishing great 
 good ; since she is introducing there the 
 idea that character may be a force as 
 well as money, and that true gentlehood 
 and courtesy may hold its own as well 
 as the crass insolence that hardly masks 
 itself under the veil of society manner. 
 
 It is a help to society, and especially 
 to the feminine half of it, to be shown 
 also that a woman's true life and real in- 
 terests are not over at the close of the 
 blossoming period ; and, indeed, that 
 the "blossoming period" itself is not 
 over so quickly as where the mind has 
 
222 COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 nothing to feed on. The studious 
 woman, with plans and interests of her 
 own that do not depend upon the glow 
 of youth for their savor, does not grow 
 old in feeling when the period of natu- 
 ral physical effervescence is past. This 
 youthfulness of feeling in turn reacts 
 upon the physical organization, breath- 
 ing into it continually a spirit of youth 
 and life that is felt and recognized by 
 everybody that comes within the scope 
 of its influence. Such a woman shows 
 to society that a pleasing type of woman- 
 hood may exist that is not dependent 
 on flattery and good opinion for hap- 
 piness, and that can be something to 
 others because it is something in itself. 
 The college-woman has also a duty 
 to perform in teaching society some 
 rational and satisfactory means of en- 
 
FOR WOMEN. 223 
 
 joyment. A truly rich and full social 
 life is the crowning flower of civilization, 
 and wealth is to be valued most highly 
 for the opportunities it affords for this 
 by the leisure it brings ; but that leisure 
 and that opportunity, so full of promise 
 in their possibilities, are, under present 
 conditions, how generally and shame- 
 fully squandered in toilsome nothings 
 and expensive emptiness! 
 
 With her rich and varied interests, 
 her broad view of the life of the world 
 in its general currents, her elevation 
 above the money standard, her ability 
 to judge by means of her own taste and 
 discernment between the fine and the 
 vulgar, the college-woman would seem 
 to be the natural educator of the neg- 
 lected rich in the arts of true refine- 
 ment and luxury. Perhaps as a result 
 
224 COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 of her teaching, the "variety-show" 
 and the cheap "problem-play" would 
 cease to be considered the satisfactory 
 exposition of comedy and tragedy, while 
 the "new journalism" and the litera- 
 ture of decadence would cease to flour- 
 ish in a society that had learned some 
 of the canons of taste that the college- 
 graduate has been trained in. 
 
 Is it too remote a fancy to look upon 
 the college-woman as the lineal descen- 
 dant of the old-time lady of the salon ? 
 Conversation in general society to-day 
 is stupid because there are so few of its 
 members who have anything to talk 
 about. The last-century Frenchwoman 
 of the grande monde, without passing 
 ostensibly through the regular discipline 
 of direct collegiate training, had attained 
 the essential results of that discipline, 
 
FOR WOMEN. 225 
 
 by reason of her real interest in the 
 things of the mind, and her industry, 
 taste, and skill in pursuit of them. 
 
 The pure culture she devoted herself 
 to, the fine taste she had by nature, the 
 college tries to impart to its graduate ; 
 and the graduate in turn may be a cen- 
 tre of these influences for others. 
 
 The college-woman, isolated in the 
 average group of the wealthy in our 
 modern society, would perhaps have a 
 hard time of it in trying to establish 
 there a salon of the old-time character. 
 She can, by herself, lead such a group 
 only a little way on the road to better 
 things, and must be contented for a time 
 simply to be accepted there. Little by 
 little, by a gradual infiltration of the 
 educated class, and especially of an 
 educated class of women, changes will 
 
226 COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 begin to take place that will show an 
 advance to a higher level ; but these 
 changes will take time, patience, and, 
 above all, tact for their accomplishment. 
 The college-woman must introduce in 
 the most gracious and apparently oc- 
 casional way, the intellectual element 
 that, once received and appreciated, will 
 brighten and give zest to society; she 
 must show her cultivation rather by air 
 and atmosphere than by a forced ob- 
 trusion of profound topics on public 
 attention ; she must, above all, be her- 
 self, frank, natural, and unaffected, or 
 she will fail to exert the influence that 
 truth, sincerity, and wholeness of pur- 
 pose always insure, and that is lost as 
 soon as one begins to palter and pre- 
 tend, and work one's plans out on a 
 foreign and hence uncertain basis. 
 
FOR WOMEN. 227 
 
 The rich in large places have learned 
 to greater or less extent the outer forms 
 and observances of a refined society. 
 In certain smaller communities, how- 
 ever, the class of wealth and leisure has 
 brought to a newly acquired position the 
 manners, habits, and customs of the 
 rude, untrained, and unorganized social 
 condition from which they sprang. In 
 such a society there is little mingling of 
 young and old in relations of mutually 
 helpful and stimulating intercourse, little 
 observance of polite forms that sug- 
 gest, even where they do not truthfully 
 express, general courtesy, mutual def- 
 erence, and innate refinement. The 
 college-woman has usually learned some- 
 thing at the college of the graces and 
 the proprieties, even if she were lacking 
 in knowledge of them before, and so has 
 
228 COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 much to do in such a society, and in 
 known instances has done much. She 
 can help to organize a social life that 
 is conducted, in its externals at least, 
 with dignity and decorum, under those 
 forms that follow laws of beauty, pro- 
 priety, and fitness in social relation, that 
 have been worked out through ages of 
 human association. She can help to 
 form a social opinion that disapproves 
 of a separation of the old from the 
 young in society, as leaving the former 
 to a deplorable stagnation of interest 
 and a general feeling of displacement 
 from social activity; the latter to an 
 unchecked play of primitive instincts 
 that will lead to all sorts of difficulties 
 and troubles. 
 
 There is a large and growing class 
 in our cities and towns — people of 
 
FOR WOMEN. 229 
 
 wealth perhaps, or of moderate means 
 — who are filled with a desire for im- 
 provement and for a true intellectual 
 life. From this class is formed the 
 "woman's club/' that new and flourish- 
 ing institution of our day, which stands 
 close to the college in the prevalence 
 and scope of its influence. Here, too, 
 is a good work for the college-graduate. 
 Many of these clubs are made up of 
 women who, deprived in the early pe- 
 riod of life of our latter-day advantages, 
 are unaccustomed to mental work, and 
 uneducated in standards of attainment. 
 They need leaders who know, and can 
 tell them, what is worth doing and what 
 is not ; what they are capable of doing, 
 and what they are not; what it means 
 to learn and to study, and what it does 
 not. Improvement in intellectual mat- 
 
23O COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 ters will scarcely come where persons 
 without training, with mediocre capacity 
 and undeveloped taste, meet only to ex- 
 change their own limited opinions, which, 
 in the very endeavor for improvement, 
 are not even simple and natural expres- 
 sions of actual thought and experience, 
 and so for this reason valuable, but 
 are artificial and valueless attempts at 
 the " literary " and the " scientific." The 
 college-woman may teach the members 
 of her club, what has been taught her, 
 that an abstract from an encyclopaedia 
 is not an essay; that the first requi- 
 site for good writing or talking upon a 
 subject is definite and distinct thought 
 about it; and that if one really has 
 something to say, the simplest and 
 most unaffected way of saying it is the 
 best. 
 
FOR WOMEN. 23I 
 
 Another feature of our time is the 
 " ladies' class," which may become the 
 means of grace or the reverse, accord- 
 ing to its conductor. With the college- 
 woman more frequent both as lecturer 
 and auditor, the " ladies' class " will 
 cease to be, as it so often is now, the 
 centre of misinformation, of shallow 
 treatment of deep themes, of dull re- 
 hearsal of dry and disconnected fact, 
 and of dogmatic deliverance upon sub- 
 jects where dogmatism should be known 
 to be impossible. The college-woman 
 may help to dispel the superstitious 
 reverence for "the book" and "the 
 teacher," which is so touching and so 
 saddening to see in many women. The 
 various crazes and fanaticisms that 
 -rage all over our country, the vari- 
 ous prophets that gather following, do 
 
232 COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 so because of a lack in the general com- 
 munity of knowledge and taste to detect 
 falsity, crudity, and extravagance, as the 
 college-woman, from her training, should 
 be especially fitted to do. 
 
 The college-woman who goes back to 
 a quiet country home has had bestowed 
 upon her much advice and much sym- 
 pathy. It has long been thought that 
 her place there was a hard one ; that 
 she had, by her college training, grown 
 out of touch with the community, so that 
 she could not, if she would, get close 
 to it again. It is pleasant to reflect 
 that while some such state of things did 
 exist in the early days of the higher 
 education for women, it has largely 
 ceased to exist now; and the college- 
 woman goes back gladly, and is re- 
 ceived gladly, in a community that has 
 
FOR WOMEN. 233 
 
 learned to know her, and to sympathize 
 to some extent with her ideals. 
 
 The greater proportion of our college- 
 graduates are country-bred, and their 
 return through the last twenty years to 
 their homes has undoubtedly had its 
 effect upon the country community. 
 There is scarcely a small village or 
 scattered farming region that does not 
 offer its opportunity for useful work to 
 the college-woman. There are interests 
 already springing into life to be en- 
 couraged, and new interests to form. 
 The young people of the neighborhood 
 eagerly welcome the reading-circle or 
 the home-study club to bring into their 
 lives something of the intellectual stim- 
 ulus that is beginning to be so generally 
 sought for. The college-graduate should 
 not, of course, make the mistake of try- 
 
234 COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 ing to force at once upon such groups 
 of young people a standard of judg- 
 ment, taste, and acquirement that it has 
 taken her four years of undivided atten- 
 tion and work in college-life to reach, to 
 say nothing of the special preparatory 
 discipline that made the college-life pos- 
 sible. She should enter into their lives 
 and plans with a due regard for condi- 
 tions of limitation, and a keen sympathy 
 for aspiration, that will prevent her from 
 assuming the airs of the " superior per- 
 son," so irritating and unpleasant to 
 those before whom they are flaunted. 
 
 The sad lack of the country district is 
 of healthful and pleasantly varied inter- 
 ests. There is apt to be in such com- 
 munities a survival of the old Puritan 
 spirit that regards the ordinary amuse- 
 ments of frivolous youth as enticements 
 
FOR WOMEN. 235 
 
 of Satan, and classes as his followers all 
 partakers in them. What are the poor 
 youngsters to do who are forbidden to 
 dance, or to pass the time with a harm- 
 less game of cards in their own homes ? 
 If there is no strong intellectual influ- 
 ence prevalent, they will assemble un- 
 occupied, in strictly youthful groups, 
 where the proverbial result of idle 
 hands, and minds too, will follow. De- 
 barred from other exercise of their 
 faculties, and from decorous pretexts 
 for association with their kind, they are 
 reduced to meeting for the bare purpose 
 of gazing upon one another, and occupy 
 their time in the parlor duo of empty 
 conversation, or in the dangerous soli- 
 tude a deux of the evening buggy-ride. 
 In such a community the college- 
 woman has a worthy work before her. 
 
236 COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 Reading-clubs, debating-societies, and 
 such occupations give young people op- 
 portunity for the social pleasures they 
 long for so naturally, and fill up the time 
 they spend together with wholesome in- 
 terests, that keep the mind from dwell- 
 ing on what is unwholesome and trivial. 
 In such occupations the older members 
 of the community may join, and it is 
 only when old and young are brought 
 together in the simple and natural rela- 
 tions of common interests and pursuits 
 that a really healthy society is formed. 
 
 There need be no lack of resource in 
 even the smallest place for interesting 
 both old and young. The locality will 
 afford ample illustrative material for 
 many of the natural sciences and for 
 most of the social sciences. The just- 
 graduated biologist can find a rich treas- 
 
FOR WOMEN. 237 
 
 ure for her own further studies, and 
 for the wonder and delight of her whole 
 neighborhood, in the old pond just back 
 of the village ; the newly fledged his- 
 torian and political scientist can teach 
 many a chapter of general history and 
 social law out of the village records 
 and traditions, and from village insti- 
 tutions, which lend color and interest to 
 what would otherwise be a bare book 
 knowledge, learned only to be forgotten. 
 There is, beneath the classes made 
 up of those who have, even if they do 
 not use it, opportunity to provide for 
 their own higher wants and needs by 
 reason of their ability to provide com- 
 fortably for their own material support, 
 another class, which, if able to care for 
 the body, can do little more than that, 
 and needs help in caring for the higher 
 
238 COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 part of life. This is the class supposed 
 to afford our "social problem," though 
 it may be doubted whether the classes 
 above them do not afford "social prob- 
 lems " quite as serious. In the work 
 of caring for this under class, the col- 
 lege-woman takes a peculiar interest, 
 a circumstance that shows how little 
 the collegiate training has unsexed 
 woman out of her instinct of care and 
 protection of the weak. Charity has 
 long been considered woman's espe- 
 cial work, which, like the work of the 
 mother, needed only instinct and nat- 
 ural emotion to make it effective. The 
 lesson is being taught now, however, 
 that the elements of society are too del- 
 icate, too complex, and too dangerous 
 in their possible activities, to be dealt 
 with in this primitive way. To do good 
 
FOR WOMEN. 239 
 
 and not harm we must know exactly 
 what we are working with. 
 
 According to this new idea, the col- 
 lege-woman is the one of all others to 
 take up this task. This fitness is partly 
 due to her general training, which has 
 tended to make her cautious, clear- 
 sighted, distrustful of too hasty general- 
 ization, respectful of accuracy, observant 
 of conditions. Contrary to the general 
 notion, the college professor of to-day 
 is the least of a theorist; the so-called 
 " facts " of popular thought, when tried 
 by his wider acquaintance with tested 
 truth, are seen to be the "theory," 
 while his so-called "theory" is found 
 to be simply the consolidation and brief 
 expression of thousands and thousands 
 of proved and ascertained facts. His 
 pupil, then, goes out from his instruc- 
 
24O COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 tion with consideration of difficulties, 
 dangers, and uncertainties, that will 
 make her work solid and valuable when 
 done. 
 
 The special fitness of the college- 
 woman for this work is also partly due 
 to the special direction the modern col- 
 lege is taking in its instruction. The 
 distinctively social sciences, conducted 
 on an observational basis, and thus 
 freed from the reproach of unreality 
 that would be cast upon them by ex- 
 clusive devotion to the abstract, are 
 taught more and more in our colleges, 
 and are studied by a larger and larger 
 proportion in each college-group. Mod- 
 ern methods of history, of economics, 
 of sociology, tend to the appreciation 
 of the human being as a most complex 
 subject of study, demanding the greatest 
 
FOR WOMEN. 24I 
 
 caution, keenness of observation, and 
 fineness of discrimination in the pursuit. 
 
 So, in her work for the less fortunate 
 classes, the college-graduate will not be 
 found blindly administering social nos- 
 trums of any kind, for she knows too 
 much of the intricacies of things to 
 hope for sudden and miraculous heal- 
 ing of all social disorders ; nor will she 
 be found trusting far to any machinery 
 of social reform, however skilfully con- 
 structed, since she recognizes in indi- 
 vidual personality the power that gives 
 effectiveness to all machinery, and that 
 can act by itself, without this mechani- 
 cal aid, in moulding and guiding the 
 character of others. 
 
 The tolerance she has learned at col- 
 lege helps her, too, in this work. The 
 destruction there of certain artificial dis- 
 
242 COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 tinctions, and the establishment of cer- 
 tain broadly human standards, make 
 her ready to meet those whom she is 
 to deal with, not with the palpable effort 
 to throw aside social constraint shown 
 by those who, however willing to help 
 others, yet feel themselves different in 
 kind from others, — an effort so easily 
 seen and felt that it spoils the effect 
 of all their work, — but naturally, sim- 
 ply, and easily, on the ground of our 
 common humanity, with a true human 
 kindness that does not need to throw 
 down barriers, because it is not en- 
 closed by any. 
 
 In all classes of society, whether up- 
 per or under, closely grouped or widely 
 scattered, the lesson to be taught by 
 the college-woman seems to be that 
 learned by her in the college, ■ — how 
 
FOR WOMEN. 243 
 
 to live the best life. The task of the 
 college-woman everywhere seems to be 
 to indicate the true values of life ; in 
 the words of one who was pointing out 
 the special work of the college-woman 
 in the college-settlement, to " suggest an 
 inward wealth apart from outward pos- 
 sessions." 
 
 It is pleasant to know that in all this 
 work for the community, of whatever 
 kind, the worker gets fully as much 
 good as she gives. It is not a one-sided 
 matter ; in fact, the worker often feels 
 that if it is one-sided, the balance of 
 benefit received lies with her. The 
 world of men and things that she comes 
 in contact with she recognizes as the 
 living, breathing, growing reality, of 
 which all the text-books, all the works 
 of literature and of art, are but the faint 
 
244 COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 and inadequate representations. She 
 will have a sense of keener enjoyment 
 in her theoretic knowledge by coming 
 close to the concrete basis of it ; she 
 will have for the concrete much more 
 interest and appreciation, stored as her 
 mind is with the views of thinking man 
 from past ages down, in regard to its 
 different phases. She makes the joyful 
 discovery, too, that the days of learning 
 are not over when the college doors 
 close behind her, but that all life is a 
 progress in that ever-delightful path. 
 
FOR WOMEN. 245 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 COLLEGE TRAINING FOR THE WAGE- 
 EARNER. 
 
 A LARGE proportion of the gradu- 
 ates from our women's colleges 
 find themselves obliged to enter some 
 paid occupation after finishing the col- 
 lege-course ; and they have, in many- 
 cases, obtained the privileges of that 
 course only on the ground that it would 
 help them later in such paid occupation. 
 They must, then, consider closely just 
 what the college can do for them, not 
 merely as a means of personal improve- 
 ment and general social benefit, but in 
 the pressing and practical business of 
 earning a living. 
 
246 COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 It may seem somewhat discouraging 
 to say, as we have to if we look fairly 
 at conditions, directly and ostensibly 
 it can do little or nothing. And yet 
 this is the plain truth that has to be 
 told. 
 
 In the long history of the college, 
 we find that two purposes have always 
 been contending for mastery there, — 
 the purpose of culture, or the building 
 up of intellect and taste for its own 
 sake, and the purpose of utility, or 
 the acquirement of knowledge and skill 
 for the use it may be put to in doing 
 something else. No college has ever, 
 probably, been quite without the influ- 
 ence of either of these; but at one 
 period the one has had more weight 
 than the other, and at another period 
 the weight has gone to the other side. 
 
FOR WOMEN. 247 
 
 The growth on the whole has been 
 toward the preponderance of the culture 
 ideal, partly owing to the revival of 
 Greek thought, with its scorn of the 
 trader, partly owing to the psychological 
 fact that men are exceedingly unwilling 
 to drop anything they have once taken 
 up, so that utility-studies of a past age, 
 the utility of which has gone by, are 
 kept as culture-studies by a later gen- 
 eration. 
 
 The college of to-day is distinctly a 
 culture-institution. The effort made 
 some twenty or twenty-five years ago to 
 introduce utility under the garb of sci- 
 ence has had the curious result of trans- 
 forming science into another branch of 
 culture. The scientist in the college is 
 as fully absorbed in the beauty, the 
 order, the intellectual plan, of his work, 
 
248 COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 and the joy of mastery for its own sake, 
 as the humanist is, and, in general, dis- 
 regards every-day utility quite as com- 
 pletely. 
 
 To get direct and special preparation 
 for any line of paid work, the student 
 must go to some technical school. As 
 the college can turn out its graduate 
 ready to give to others, to some extent, 
 what he has received there, teaching 
 may be regarded as a partial exception 
 to the above rule. A large proportion 
 of our college-graduates, and an espe- 
 cially large proportion of our women- 
 graduates from colleges, who take up 
 paid occupations at all, become teachers 
 without further preparation. The col- 
 lege is not, however, strictly speaking, 
 a technical school, even for teachers. 
 The pupil may learn there what to teach, 
 
FOR WOMEN. 249 
 
 but how to teach is an art in itself, and 
 is coming to be more and more regarded 
 as such, so that it is thought to need its 
 own appropriate technical training. 
 
 If we next inquire in what occupa- 
 tions college training is directly opera- 
 tive in securing larger money-returns 
 after the special technical training is 
 added to it, we meet with the answer, 
 practically none where we can trace 
 directly a measurable and tangible ad- 
 vantage arising from it. The teacher 
 to-day, it is true, stands a better chance 
 with a college degree than without it ; 
 but in this line the competition is so 
 severe that the holding of a degree does 
 not so much mean the securing of a 
 higher salary, as it does the chance of 
 securing a place at all. The level of 
 requirement seems to have mounted 
 
250 COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 somewhat above the level of opportu- 
 nity and remuneration. The worker 
 who wants to teach must be much bet- 
 ter prepared for her work than ever 
 before, but her pay is not increased in 
 proportion to the improvement in her 
 preparation. In law, in the ministry, 
 and as a physician, the worker may 
 achieve an ample success without col- 
 lege training; and observation of the 
 field of journalism seems to show that 
 accuracy, scholarship, and cultivated 
 taste, such as are acquired in the col- 
 lege, are rather hindrances than other- 
 wise to a paying journalistic career. 
 The successful librarian does not need 
 to be a college-graduate, nor is it found 
 that in mercantile employments a col- 
 lege training is directly necessary. The 
 shrewd business mind does not need a 
 
FOR WOMEN. 251 
 
 collegiate education to enable it to turn 
 money over to advantage, and it is often 
 questioned whether such education is 
 not something of a drawback to success 
 in this line. 
 
 If the college, then, does not fit the 
 paid worker directly for any special pur- 
 suit, how is she to justify herself in 
 spending time and money on a training 
 that she can only afford because it is 
 going to be of some practical benefit to 
 her? 
 
 The training given by the college is 
 of practical benefit to its pupil ; though 
 that benefit cannot be marked out with 
 a foot-rule, or counted up in dollars and 
 cents. It has its practical use for her 
 in general by making a more complete 
 person of her. The richness of re- 
 source, the discipline of temperament, 
 
252 COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 the breadth and tolerance that make 
 the college-graduate an efficient mother 
 and a valuable social influence, are just 
 as useful in the paid occupations. The 
 college-trained teacher may not find the 
 opportunity three times in her teaching 
 experience of teaching directly those 
 higher matters that she learned in the 
 college, but everything that she does 
 teach will be taught from a higher level 
 and in a broader spirit. She stands 
 where she can see into higher regions, 
 and bring from them inspiration down 
 below. She has in herself a general up- 
 lift of spirit gained from her wide and 
 familiar acquaintance with the best in 
 the world of thought, that will commu- 
 nicate itself to her pupils even when she 
 is teaching them spelling and the mul- 
 tiplication table. The qualities that 
 
FOR WOMEN. 253 
 
 bring success to the lawyer or doctor 
 are not always those strictly connected 
 with the technical part of her work. In- 
 sight, tact, general knowledge enough to 
 give a sense of proportion, are a part of 
 the professional woman's outfit that will 
 prove of great value to her in one way 
 and another, and that the college helps 
 her to gain. The college-bred journalist, 
 too, need not wholly despair; she has 
 a broader foundation to build on than 
 has her uneducated fellow-worker, and 
 may find what she fails to earn in money 
 value amply made up to her by the in- 
 creased satisfaction she can take in her 
 work, which, from her training, stands 
 the chance of being better in itself, of 
 being better placed when it appears 
 before the world, and of being held 
 in higher regard and respect by the 
 
254 COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 best part of the reading public than the 
 work of the average untrained or half- 
 trained newspaper writer. The training 
 given by the college seems to be quite 
 thrown away in business life, yet even 
 here there is a possible use for it. While 
 the college does not and cannot teach 
 the art of money-making, it does and 
 can teach something of the general uni- 
 formities that prevail in the economic 
 and social world, and so can, to some 
 extent, preserve its pupil from the vital 
 error of thinking that laws of nature 
 may be violated with profit even to 
 one's self, at the call of some pressing 
 personal interest. 
 
 There is much, too, of the method 
 and habit of thought learned in the 
 college that will be of benefit to the 
 paid worker. While the college has 
 
FOR WOMEN. 255 
 
 not trained her in the details of any- 
 especial activity, it has trained her in 
 certain general principles common to 
 all activity; and these, learned in one 
 occupation, may be conveniently and 
 easily applied to another. The college- 
 student has been obliged to administer 
 her' affairs in order ; task follows task, 
 and requirement follows requirement, so 
 that she must make for herself some 
 plan of arrangement, or be overwhelmed 
 by her work. She has learned to apply 
 herself to her business with systematic 
 industry, and to control her attention 
 and her thoughts when she has a piece 
 of work to do until that piece of work 
 is done. In her intercourse with pro- 
 fessors and fellow-students, and as a 
 result of their calls upon her for reci- 
 tation, examination, society work, de- 
 
256 COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 bates, and the like, she has acquired a 
 certain alertness of mind that makes 
 her ready to produce what she knows, 
 and to find in it all possible suggestions 
 and connections with the thoughts and 
 plans of others. She has learned to 
 discriminate between the more and the 
 less important ; she has learned what it 
 is to be accurate, and has trained her- 
 self in patience to reach this ideal. All 
 this is useful training for practical life. 
 The ability to take up a complicated 
 matter right end first, to attend to each 
 detail of it in proper order, and to stick 
 at it until it is done, and done well, is 
 as useful and helpful in the trades and 
 professions as it is in solving the prob- 
 lems of the Calculus, or in interpreting 
 a Greek text. 
 
 Even though she recognizes the fact, 
 
FOR WOMEN. 257 
 
 however, that the college training will 
 be of real value to her in remunerative 
 work, the woman-graduate will probably 
 have an uncomfortable moment or two 
 when she first steps foot out from the 
 cloistered quiet of the college into the 
 whirring confusion of the world. In 
 the college everything was arranged in 
 definite order; each person had an as- 
 signed place in a definitely graded sys- 
 tem. The Freshman becomes a Soph- 
 omore, then a Junior and a Senior, each 
 with prescribed duties, privileges, and 
 obligations. From the degree of A.B. 
 she may "proceed to the degree of" 
 A.M. by regular stages, or to the degree 
 of Ph.D. 
 
 In the world no such orderly proces- 
 sion of events, no such definite placing 
 of persons, is apparent ; what the new 
 
258 COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 graduate sees there is a seemingly plan- 
 less struggle to get ahead in matters 
 unworthy of attention from a trained 
 and scholarly mind. The world's activi- 
 ties appear a confused jumble, now 
 starting up out of nothing, and now 
 ending suddenly in nothing, systemati- 
 cally related to nothing fixed and con- 
 stant nor to each other. The general 
 public, which is also the general pay- 
 master, wants one thing to-day and 
 another to-morrow; and most of the 
 things it wants, seem to be the mate- 
 rial goods of life or else the vulgar and 
 trivial sorts of intellectual wares. She 
 finds, to her discouragement, that the 
 degree she has worked so long and so 
 hard for, and has perhaps taken with 
 such high distinction, is not an imme- 
 diate " open sesame " to the world's 
 
FOR WOMEN. 259 
 
 treasure-house, and that there is no 
 open market for essays on "The Halo- 
 gen Elements in Carbon Compounds" 
 or " The Imperfect Indicative in Plautus 
 and Terence." In all this uncertain 
 region she has ventured out into, the 
 graduate sees no place for the power 
 of abstract and systematic thought, 
 the feeling for the ideal and the univer- 
 sal, that she has learned to train and to 
 cherish in the college ; and she begins 
 to feel that she is decidedly unfitted for 
 life outside that pleasant enclosure. 
 
 The graduate must, however, keep up 
 good courage. Closer acquaintance will 
 show some order in this apparent chaos ; 
 and, little by little, glimpses of oppor- 
 tunity that will lead to wider vistas will 
 open up to her. Much of her future 
 success will depend upon the attitude 
 
26o COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 of mind she assumes at this transition 
 period. 
 
 She must, in the first place, admit 
 and act upon the fact that the particu- 
 lar order and gradation of qualities and 
 persons observed in the college does 
 not hold good in the outside world ; 
 she cannot expect to be known and 
 valued in the community in general as 
 she was known and valued in the col- 
 lege, because she was the first scholar 
 in her class, or the medallist of the 
 year. The graduate has, in fact, to 
 make a new place for herself in the 
 community, in doing which, all the good 
 things she has gained at college will 
 help ; but these she must break up and 
 use as raw material, so to speak, — she 
 will probably not be able to use them in 
 just their original form. 
 
FOR WOMEN. 26l 
 
 In making the new place, the gradu- 
 ate must drop her preconceived notions 
 as to what that place is to be. She 
 should not set a fixed limit of occupa- 
 tion for herself, below which she feels 
 that everything is unworthy of her. 
 She must be content to snatch a foot- 
 hold anywhere on the rapidly whirling 
 coach of the world's affairs, until she 
 can, by ingenuity and activity, climb, 
 somehow or other, to the box-seat and 
 drive. However competent she may 
 be for that place from the start, she 
 must remember that her fellow-passen- 
 gers do not at first know it; and she 
 must get aboard with them somehow in 
 order to convince them. 
 
 The college-woman may take up al- 
 most any occupation without fear that 
 she will be degraded below her own 
 
262 COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 proper standard by so doing. It is not 
 the occupation itself, but the person 
 employed in it, that makes it seem low 
 or high. In the days when domestic 
 service was performed by members of 
 the family or by a neighbor's assis- 
 tance, when the well-educated, self-re- 
 specting daughters of the quiet country 
 community went into factories to earn 
 a living, there was no thought or talk 
 of the social disabilities of the " ser- 
 vant-girl " and the " factory-hand." All 
 that is needed to make a place respected 
 is that the holder shall be respectable; 
 and it might be a good thing if some 
 of our college-graduates should turn 
 their attention to the regeneration of 
 society by the practical teaching of this 
 truth. 
 
 The college-woman will find ample 
 
FOR WOMEN. 263 
 
 opportunity to make her qualities felt 
 wherever she goes; and not only this, 
 she will find avenues of pleasurable ac- 
 tivity and usefulness where she would 
 little suspect them. When one sees an 
 occupation only from the outside, one 
 misses all the interesting detail of the 
 work, all the pleasant possibilities of 
 intercourse with others that may mean 
 so much when one looks from the in- 
 side. There is a peculiar pleasure in 
 mastering the routine and understand- 
 ing the hidden workings of almost any 
 occupation. There is always an oppor- 
 tunity, not only to learn the ins and 
 outs of the occupation as it stands,-— 
 and learning is always a pleasure, — 
 but to exercise powers of invention and 
 organization in improving and perfect- 
 ing the occupation. Every pursuit, too, 
 
264 COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 offers its own particular opportunity for 
 personal service to others, a chance, 
 that if taken, brings perpetual delight 
 and interest. 
 
 Although the worker may feel, how- 
 ever, that there is good to be got out of 
 any occupation, she may recognize that 
 not all occupations are alike in their 
 opportunities ; and she has a right to 
 personal preference in choosing among 
 them. It is not necessary that she 
 should remain fixed all her life in the 
 spot she has dropped into at first. 
 While she must show a due humility 
 and willingness to take hold anywhere 
 at the beginning, she should keep her 
 eyes always open for chances of wider 
 usefulness and more congenial activity. 
 If she does this, and is not afraid to 
 move about to test her own value, and 
 
FOR WOMEN. 265 
 
 to assert it where it seems necessary, 
 to take some risks, and to assume some 
 responsibilities, she will, little by little, 
 find her true place in the world. 
 
 In selecting a permanent occupation, 
 the graduate will do well to show some 
 originality of thought. She should not 
 be prevented from a trial of any plans 
 she may make for herself by well-mean- 
 ing friends who cannot see possibilities 
 in anything outside the beaten track of 
 customary occupation. The worker is 
 apt to do better outside the beaten 
 track than in it. Looking over the 
 field of the paid activities to-day, one 
 finds that a large proportion of them 
 are not the simple outcome of the fun- 
 damental and changeless needs of man- 
 kind, and thought of because hunger 
 and thirst, cold and heat, make them 
 
266 COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 inevitable necessities, but are the out- 
 right invention of alert-minded persons 
 who have had something of their own 
 to offer, and have created a need by- 
 supplying it. The worker who thinks 
 of a new work to do, is usually led to it 
 by some natural taste and inclination of 
 her own, which is of itself a warrant that 
 the work will be especially well done, 
 and hence worth paying for. There is, 
 too, a better chance for reward in the 
 new occupation by reason of the work- 
 ing of competition. The mechanically 
 minded person can see only one or two 
 definite pursuits to engage in, with def- 
 initely fixed salaries, better or worse. 
 As most people permit themselves to 
 look at life only in this mechanical way, 
 a great rush is made for these well- 
 known occupations, which keeps the 
 
FOR WOMEN. 26j 
 
 money-reward to be gained from them 
 at a low level. Each one, then, who 
 enters a new occupation is not only 
 benefiting herself by entering a field 
 where there is less competition, but is 
 also helping her fellow-workers by doing 
 just so much to relieve the pressure 
 in the older occupations. 
 
 The community, too, is benefited by 
 such a course. We have about aban- 
 doned the idea held by certain philo- 
 sophic sects, and certain schools of 
 religion, and by them introduced into 
 wide currency in thought if not in prac- 
 tice, that the highest form of life is 
 reached by the reduction of human 
 wants to the lowest level. Life in the 
 physical organism consists in a constant 
 interchange of waste and repair, of 
 need and satisfaction; and the more 
 
268 COLLEGE TRAINING 
 
 vigorous is this interchange, the more 
 complete is the life. In the social or- 
 ganism the same law holds ; the succes- 
 sion of want and gratification there is 
 no less truly life than the process of 
 waste and repair in the body. 
 
 The completest life of the social or- 
 ganism, which we call "civilization," 
 like the completest life in the physical 
 organism, is attained when wants and 
 satisfactions are so related in a mutu- 
 ally supporting scheme that they lead 
 to ever-deepening sources of power and 
 ever-widening possibilities of happiness. 
 The community with the most varied 
 activities, and the richest resources of 
 supply, provided that they are harmo- 
 niously related, and afford a foundation 
 for an indefinite succession of other ac- 
 tivities and resources, has the fullest 
 
FOR WOMEN. 269 
 
 life ; and that member in it who devel- 
 ops a new social want, and at the same 
 time provides the means for its gratifi- 
 cation, is in so far helping it to attain 
 this ideal completeness. 
 
 The college-graduate has no reason 
 for discouragement over her chances for 
 making her own way. Success in any 
 line of life depends on personal charac- 
 ter and power; these the college tends 
 to train and to develop, and these will 
 make themselves inevitably felt where- 
 ever they are found. Personal charac- 
 ter will make a low occupation high, a 
 trivial one important, by its use of them ; 
 it will make a new occupation suited to 
 its needs if it does not find one already 
 made ; it will discover anywhere an op- 
 portunity for helping and influencing 
 others ; it will, in short, in the exact 
 
270 COLLEGE TRAINING. 
 
 degree of its own worthiness, despite 
 all the hindrances and difficulties that 
 may be opposed to it, finally and surely 
 rise to its proper level, and receive its 
 fitting and adequate reward in the ap- 
 preciation and approval of the commu- 
 nity.