Let us pass over that portion of our statement which hints at vocation, and confine ourselves, for the present, to that part of it which looks to an unrestricted mental culture. Nowhere is this systematically denied to women. It is quite common to hear people say, "There is no need to press that subject. Education in New England is free to women. In Bangor, Portsmouth, Newburyport, and Boston, they are better Latin scholars than the men. Nothing can set this stream back: turn and labor elsewhere."
We have shown to how very small an extent this statement is true. If it were true of the mere means of education, education itself is not won for woman, till it brings to her precisely the same blessings that it bears to the feet of man; till it gives her honor, respect, and bread; till position becomes the rightful inheritance of capacity, and social influence follows a knowledge of mathematics and the languages. Our deficiency in the last stages of the culture offered to our women made a strong impression on a late Russian traveller.
"Is that the best you can do?" said Mr. Kapnist, when he came out of the Mason-street Normal School for Girls. "It is very poor. In Russia, we should do better. At Cambridge, you have eminent men in every kind,—Agassiz, Gray, Peirce. Why do they not lecture to these women? In Russia, they would go everywhere,—speak to both sexes. At a certain age, recitation is the very poorest way of imparting knowledge."
To all adult minds, lectures convey instruction more happily than recitation; and, when men and women are taught together, the lecture system is valuable, because it permits the mind to appropriate its own nutriment, and does not oppress the faculties with uncongenial food.
To those who are familiar with the whole question, no theme is more painful than that of the inadequate compensation and depressed position of the female teacher. There is no need to harp on this discordant string. Let us strike its key-note in a single story.
A year ago, in one of the most beautiful towns of this neighborhood, separated by a grassy common, shaded with drooping elms, rose two ample buildings, dedicated to the same purpose. They were the High Schools for the two sexes.
They were taught by two persons, admirably fitted for their work. The man, uncommonly happy in imparting instruction, was yet deficient in mathematics, and considered by competent judges inferior to the woman.
She was an orphan, with a young sister dependent upon her for instruction and support. She had been graduated with the highest honors at one of the State Normal Schools. She was delicate and beautiful; not in the least "strong-minded." Neither spectacles upon her nose, nor wooden soles to her boots, appealed to the popular indignation. All who knew her loved her; and the man whom we have named was not ashamed to receive instruction from her in geometry and algebra. The two schools were equal in numbers. The man was a bachelor, subject to no claim beyond his own necessity. What did common sense and right reason demand, but that these two persons should be treated alike by society, prudential committees, and so on? You shall hear what was the fact. The man was engaged at a salary of fifteen hundred dollars. The wealthiest class in the community intrusted its sons to his charge without question. Single, he was made much of in society, invited to parties, and had his own corner at many a tea-table, which he brightened with his pleasant jokes. He soon came to be a person in the town,—had his vote, was valued accordingly; went to church, was put upon committees, had a great deal to do with calling the new minister, and so, out of school, had pleasant and varied occupation, which saved his soul from racking to death over the ruts of the Latin grammar. Would we have it otherwise? Was it not all right? Certainly it was, and our friend deserved it; deserved, too, that when the second year was half over, and there were rumors that a distant city had secured his services, the committee should raise his salary two hundred and fifty dollars, and so keep him for themselves. But let us look at the reverse of the picture. The woman, burdened with the care of a younger sister, greatly this man's superior in mathematics and possibly in other things, was engaged at six hundred dollars. It was not customary for the wealthy families in that neighborhood to trust their girls to the tender mercies of a public school; so she had a class of pupils less elegant in manner, of more ordinary mental training, and every way more difficult to control. Still they were disciplined, and learned to love their teacher. A few of the parents called upon her, and she was occasionally invited to their homes. But these homes were not congenial to her tastes or habits. There was no intellectual stimulus derived from them to brighten her life. They offered neither pictures, statues, books, nor the results of travel, to her delicate and yearning appreciation. She talked, for the most part, of her pupils and their work; and the strain of her vocation, always heavier on woman than on man, wore more and more upon her soul. Society, as such, offered her no welcome.[2]
She was nothing to the town. She hired her seat, and went to church. She had no vote, was never on a parish committee, had only one chance to change her position. That was to remove to a more congenial neighborhood, at a lower salary; but she thought of her young sister, and refused. If the committee heard of it, they did not offer to increase her salary. They were men incapable of appreciating her rare and modest culture. There was a tendency to consumption in her frame. Had she been happy, she might have resisted it for years, perhaps for ever; but with the restless pining at her heart, that mental and moral marasmus, the physical disease soon showed itself. In the commencement of the third year of her teaching, she began to cough; and, in less than three months from the day when she heard her last class, she lay in an early but not unhonored grave. The deep affection of her classmates in the Normal School had always followed her; and one who chanced to hear of her illness brightened its rapid decline. This woman, herself prematurely old, in consequence of twelve years of labor on the Red River of Louisiana, the only place open to her, where her abilities were appreciated to the extent of twelve hundred dollars a year, and would enable her to support a widowed mother,—this woman, with her now-scanty purse, supplied the invalid with fresh flowers and sweet pictures; and, when her heavy eye grew weary of gazing, gently closed it in the sleep of death, scattered rare and fragrant blossoms over her unconscious form, and followed it to the grave. Those flowers! brought daily to her teacher's-desk by a friendly or loving hand, they might have fed a craving heart, and saved a precious life.