June 23rd, F. W. Smith wrote to Mrs. Carr answering her questions regarding the Tennessee Female College at Franklin. He hesitates to advise her to accept it, but believes she could make of it a success, and assures her of his hearty support should she undertake the work there.
About the same time, W. J. Loos writes to Mr. Carr from Louisville: "We have your article from the Guide; had just received a note from Mrs. Carr covering the same ground. I will keep an eye on the field, and if I see any favorable opening, will let you know. I think you ought to appear more frequently in the Guide."
In 1891, the Carrs are thinking of going to Kentucky with their enterprise. In September, Mr. Carr writes to Mrs. Carr from "Brother McGarvey's study": "Brother Bartholomew says he will prepare you a prospective so that a cut can be made from it, of the college building, if you will give him the idea as to size, etc., and that it can be done in three or four days. For his work, he will charge nothing, but he will have to pay the man who does the drawing for the cut, and the cut will cost about $15." Tentative diagrams at this time, show that Mrs. Carr was making her own designs, arranging the rooms of her college—wherever it was to be—to suit her own ideas. It is no easy matter to make the cut of our college before there is any college. Still it must be done, to bring the scheme tangibly before the public, and one's imagination must become fixed in steel.
September 9th, Mrs. Carr writes Mrs. Weaver from Omaha: "I hope to be with you next week. I shall be in Springfield only a few days, I presume. Then I shall go on to Sherman, to begin the College enterprise. My love to Tillie." (Tillie was Mrs. Weaver's little daughter.) "Tell the dear child to have a dozen kisses ready for me."
Affairs seem to be crystalizing in and about Sherman, Texas. A site is provisionally chosen for the proposed college, "on a beautiful elevation," says Mrs. Carr, "in her eastern suburb, overlooking an immense circuit of country, as charming as the bluegrass region of our native State."
A mass meeting of the citizens of Sherman was called, which Mrs. Carr addresses in the interests of the enterprise. The arguments she produces appear to cover all the ground in sight, and all probable contingencies of the future. She says:
"If another girls college be established in Sherman, it will bring among you many more girls. They, in boarding-school vocabulary, will 'get awful hungry,' and must be fed. Our grocers will have to order a large supply of boarding-school staples, and our meat markets will have to multiply their sirloin roasts and porterhouse steaks. These girls will have boxes of roast turkey and French candies smuggled to them by sympathetic mamas, and nature in her mercy, will send a wave of nausea, and a cry will go up for our Homeopathic M. D. with his pleasant little pills, or for our old school dignified Regular with his calomel and quinine, or for our cautious Eclectic with his 'best' from all schools, and each will add to his list of patients, and our druggists will multiply their prescriptions, and their profits. These girls will delight in pretty dresses and becoming hats—." And so the dry goods stores will have their innings, and the milliners. Hope is next held out to the bookstores, the music supply companies, the opera house, the street car lines, etc.
Perhaps it is not so apparent what advantage the new college may be to those institutions already established in the city. But Mrs. Carr promptly takes up this point, and elucidates it with faultless logic:
"For example, Miss Smith, who is a member of the Christian Church, comes from Galveston, and attends the Christian College of Sherman. She is pleased with the school and delighted with our town. When she returns home, at the close of her session she tells her intimate Baptist friend, Miss Jones, and her intimate Methodist friend, Miss Brown, what a delightful place Sherman is, and how 'jolly' it would be for all to go to school in the same town, etc. What is the result? The following September Sherman Institute opens its doors to Miss Jones, and North Texas Female College welcomes Miss Brown. But that is not all. Miss Jones of Galveston has a brother who must be sent to college, and, with the true impulse of an affectionate sister, she says, 'Oh, brother Jimmie, get papa to send you to Austin College, or Mahan's Commercial College; and you can come to see me every Saturday.' Therefore, all the Baptists and Methodists of Sherman ought to encourage our enterprise to the extent of their financial ability."
Mrs. Carr proceeds to point out how the building of her college will give employment to carpenters, brick masons, carters, etc., how it will help fill the purses of the dealers in hardware and furniture, and carpets, and coal, etc., until most of the industries known to man are shown to be directly concerned.