Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 36.djvu/622

604 she thinks now as well as feels, and the inevitable result is that her attitude is more judicial than of old."

"Do you know," here interpolates a newly graduated collegian, "that in our colleges it has become a proverb that, if a girl isn't engaged before she is a sophomore, the chances are all against her marriage?"

The assent to this is very general, and one of the older women states the evident reasons for it: "We become more interested in our studies, more certain of our ability to take care of ourselves, and therefore less interested in men as possible lovers, and more independent of them as a means of support."

"And also," dryly remarks a very marriageable maiden, "it becomes evident to us that, as a matter of fact, the men whom our friends marry do not always come to time in their rôle of 'providers,’ and are not infrequently ready to accept assistance at the hands of the women whom they have undertaken to support."

Apropos of this, it is here suggested that possibly the prospect of domestic drudgery is not congenial to women who have found themselves capable of different and better work; and this is assented to by several of those present who are supporting their own establishments, and paying servants to perform the household labor which would fall upon their shoulders were they in the position of the married woman of average means.

This, again, suggests a comparison as to the relative value of the normal home wherein father, mother, and children complete the group, and of those more artificial homes which lack the natural elements of union. Generous recognition is at once given of the beauty of the possible home, and of the power and importance of the woman who creates it; but that this is woman's only field is emphatically denied. There are now open to her many channels through which she can influence the race, and the question is raised as to whether the advantage in this respect is altogether on the side of the married woman. Two or three of the older women in the group, who have had long and varied experience as teachers, ask if it is not probable that among the many children who have come into their hands there are not some, at least, who owe more to their school environment than to the home life. They claim that they, as teachers, should be credited with the influence which, in the nature of things, is inseparable from the responsibility which is put upon them. "To us," they say, "and not to the already overburdened wife and mother, is given the power to lead and direct the youth of the race. Would you have us, with that in view, aim for anything less than the best? The education of English and American children is, in the main, in the hands of women, and this not because of an anomalous social condition, but because of their peculiar fitness for the work. On Mr. Allen's