Lucille said that she favored an education which would best conserve and enlarge woman's graces, her delicate feeling and thought, and her love for the beautiful.
Then Leo and Alfonso both declared that Lucille had expressed fully their own opinions.
Colonel Harris added, "Come, Gertrude, tell us what you think."
Her face flushed a little as she replied, for she felt all that she said, "Father, I like what Mr. Searles has told us. I think higher education for women should develop purity of heart, self-forgetfulness, and enlarged and enriched minds."
"Well spoken, daughter," said Colonel Harris. "Now, dear, what have you to say?"
Mrs. Harris had listened well, as she had been a slave in the interests of her children, especially of her daughters. She thought that the last twenty-five years had proved that women in physical and intellectual capacity were able to receive and profit by a college education. Often she had longed for the same training of mind that men of her acquaintance enjoyed. The subject was thus discussed with profit, till the Turkish coffee was served. Closing the discussion, Searles thought that America led England in offering better education to woman, but that England had given her more freedom in politics; the English woman voted for nearly all the elective officers, except members of Parliament. He believed that the principle of education of woman belonged to her as a part of humanity; that it gave to her a self-centered poise, that it made her a competent head of the home, where the family is trained as a unit of civilization.
He felt that woman possessed the finest and highest qualities, and that it was her mission to project and incorporate these elevating qualities into society. He thought man had nothing to fear or lose, but much to gain; that to multiply woman's colleges everywhere, was to furnish the twentieth century, or "Woman's Century" as Victor Hugo called it, with a dynamic force, that would beget more blessings for humanity than all previous centuries.
Gertrude thanked Mr. Searles for what he had said, and the party withdrew to the Winter Garden Café, pretty with palms, where Lucille, Leo, and Alfonso talked of society matters, of art and music.
Gertrude read to her mother, while Hugh Searles and Colonel Harris stepped outside into the gentlemen's café for a smoke, as both were fond of a cigar. There the conversation naturally drifted upon the tariff question.
Mr. Searles asserted that he favored free trade, and that he was sorry America was not as far advanced and willing as Great Britain to recognize the universal and fundamental principle of the brotherhood of mankind, and the inborn right of everybody to trade as he liked in the world's cheapest markets. He added that he sometimes felt that Americans were too selfish, too much in love with the vulgar dollar.