“EIGHTY YEARS YOUNG”
Of Mrs. Howe it may very fittingly be said that she is eighty years young. Her blue eye retains its brightness, and her dignified carriage betokens none of the feebleness of age. Above all, her mind seems to hold, in a marvelous degree, its youthful vigor and elasticity; a fact that especially impressed me as the author of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” expressed her views on the desirability of a college training for girls.
“The girls who go to college,” said Mrs. Howe, “are very much in request, I should say for everything,—certainly for teaching. Then, naturally, if they wish to follow literature, they have a very great advantage over those who have not had the benefit of a college course, having a liberal education to begin with.”
“Which is the greater advantage to a girl, to have talent or great perseverance?”
“In order to accomplish anything really worth doing, I think great perseverance is of the first importance. On the other hand, one cannot do a great deal without talent, while special talent without perseverance never amounts to much. I once heard Mr. Emerson say, ‘Genius without character is mere friskiness;’ and we all know of highly gifted people, who, because lacking the essential quality of perseverance, accomplish very little in the world.”
“Do you think the college girl will exercise a greater influence on modern progress and the civilization of the future than her untrained sister?”
“Oh, very much greater,” was the quick, emphatic reply. “In the first place, I think that college-bred girls are quite as likely to marry as others, and when a college girl marries, then the whole family is lifted to a higher plane, the natural result of the well-trained, cultivated mind. Mothers of old, you know, were very ignorant. Indeed, it is sad to think what few advantages they had. Of course, some of them had opportunities to study alone, but this solitary study could not accomplish for them what the colleges, with their corps of specialists and trained professors, are doing for the young women of to-day.”