Page:The Genius of America (1923).pdf/199

 younger generation because I hear of it constantly. Recently one of the most interesting and intelligent members of a graduating class came to me to talk, as she said, about her future. "I have spent," she said, "four years at the University. Now they want me to go home and marry and settle down and be 'just a good woman.' My home-town will sweep over me and swallow up everything that I have learned in my years here. I don't want to be a good woman!" "What do you want to be?" I enquired. She could not phrase the answer promptly. But she had both arms extended towards the infinite. And by that token I could tell well enough that what she wanted was "something great and good that she should do with her heart."

Now, every educator who is worth his salt knows that this hungry discontent of one-and-twenty indicates in the hopefullest way that education is "taking." But it indicates also that education is still incomplete. It indicates that imagination has not yet surveyed realistically the field of service. A girl of twenty who stands with arms wide-stretched towards the infinite is usually thinking secretly of New York or Chicago, which are by no means infinite. And so the small towns and provincial