Page:In the dozy hours, and other papers.djvu/85

 Rh But college does not give men a distaste for social life. On the contrary, it is the best possible training for that bigger, broader field in which the ceaseless contact with their fellow-creatures rounds and perfects the many-sidedness of manhood. If college girls are disposed to overestimate the importance of lectures, and to underestimate the importance of balls, this is merely a transient phase of criticism, and has no lasting significance. Lectures and balls are both very old. They have played their parts in the history of the world for some thousands of years; they will go on playing them to the end. Let us not exaggerate personal preference, however contagious it may appear, into a symbol of approaching revolution.

For our great hope is this: As university training becomes less and less exceptional for girls, they will insensibly acquire broader and simpler views; they will easily understand that life is too big a thing to be judged by college codes. As the number of women doctors and women architects increases with every year, they will take themselves, and be taken by the world, with more simplicity and candor.