Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 66.djvu/578

578 Certainly, only by education and culture! If the college does not give these, reform but do not eliminate it.

Let us glance for a moment at the alternative opened to girls if they do not go to college. Our college girls come mainly, I think, largely at least, from our upper middle classes. Suppose our girl of seventeen or eighteen has just finished her school life, what is she to do? Dr. Smith says: 'Marry.' But really, it seems to me, she will have to wait until she is asked—and meanwhile she will have to occupy herself in some way. The fact of her entering college does not prevent any young man from asking her hand and many a girl leaves college to be married. The question to be solved is simply of how the time intervening between school and marriage is to be passed. If Dr. Smith will study carefully the girls who do not go to college, but who devote themselves to social functions, I think I may venture to predict that his choice of his future daughter-in-law would be more likely to fall upon an earnest college girl than upon one of the social denizens, and that the chances of her having extravagant tastes, indolent habits or poor constitution are less than they would be in the case of the less cultured girl. I believe, but am not sure, that statistics have shown that divorces are much less common among college women than among those who have not been to college.

That a girl's education should not be merely intellectual I readily admit. Sewing, cooking and housework are as much a part of their preparation for their life work as is shop work for our young engineers. But here again we find that mothers are too busy or too indulgent to undertake the task of teaching their daughters and so in the early years the school tries—again with questionable success—to do it for them, and in the later years as a rule it is not done at all—neither for the collegian nor non-collegian.

It is perfectly natural that a girl who has grown up without having done any manual work should not like it when the necessity for it arises, but I doubt very much whether it can be shown that the intellectual girl dislikes it more than the non-intellectual, and our college girl, if she has benefited by her course as she should, has learned the possibility of applying her powers to an uncongenial task and has many more powers to apply than her less educated sister. Were I a hungry husband, I should have more hope of a palatable dinner prepared by a college-bred wife ignorant of cookery, than from one equally ignorant who lacked the college training.

A word as regards the best age for a woman to marry. It seems to me that the chances for marital happiness are best where a woman marries, at about 22, an age at which she can have easily finished her college course and at which she is certainly better qualified to judge of the qualities of the man who asks her to marry him than she was four years before. Suppose she marries a man but a few years older than herself, there is plenty of time for them to have a family of five or six children, which is as many as even an energetic mother can well attend to. Probably her demands in the choice of a husband will be more exacting, not as regards wealth, but as regards mind and soul. Could a better stimulus be found for the improvement of our young men?

As to the physical health of our college girls, I feel sure it will compare favorably with that of non-collegians. Neither class is as well as it should be, the reason being, in my judgment, not excessive intellectual exertion but undue excitement and anxiety. The college girl who is chairman of the dramatic association, or the non-college girl who is chairman of the entertainment committee in church, alike suffer from a mental strain which is much more likely to prove injurious