Page:The Higher Education of Women.djvu/111

 be going on all the same whether a girl were being educated or not. Such a sum would, in three or four years of successful practice, be recovered, and any further earnings would be clear gain. No doubt, in cases of very early marriage, a part or even the whole of the sum expended would be sunk; and the result of giving women professions would probably be, on the whole, to encourage comparatively early marriage, partly by bringing persons of congenial tastes into mutual intercourse, and partly by rendering marriages possible which would otherwise be flagrantly imprudent. But supposing that a woman married a rich man before she had begun to practise, the loss of the sum mentioned could easily be spared. If she married a