With this explanation Miss Susanna began in her concise utterance:
“My Dear Friend:
“How swiftly time passes! I can scarcely realize that almost two years have elapsed since you visited the United States. I had hoped to come to you in France, not later than next autumn, but a peculiar, and what I trust may be a fortunate, turn in my affairs makes it necessary for me to sail for China next month. It is my expectation to remain in China for at least a year and embark upon what promises to be a successful business venture.
“I am greatly concerned in thinking of you and of the future of my country. How little I gave you mentally and spiritually in comparison with all you gave me—the true essence of lofty patriotism; the counsel of a mind among minds. I shall ever keep before me your nobility of spirit; your boundless generosity to America; your unfailing consideration toward me. I am of the opinion that my best effort to please you must lie in helping my country. What does our United States need that I can give? My life? Always at call. Yet how else may I perform my patriotic part?
“Only to you can I confide an idea, recurring often to me since the death of my mother, which occurred when I was a boy of fifteen. She was an exceptional woman who, with her two brothers, had been educated by a tutor in England. She was a staunch advocate of the higher education for young women. I have never since known her equal. She, herself, being the strongest proof of her belief. Having known her can I, therefore, be less convinced of the grace and necessity of the higher education for young America’s daughters as well as her sons.
“In loving memory of my mother I shall some day found a college for young women after my own heart. I have not much faith in polite female academies. My mind leans toward colleges for young women, conducted in precisely the same manner as are colleges for young men. Nor does it seem to me that the faculty of such institutions of learning should needs be composed entirely of women. The professors in our colleges for young men are far more proficient in learning than the majority of the women engaged to teach girls in the few seminaries and academies of the United States.
“In these painful, formative days of our republic young women should receive the same educational advantages as young men. Let us train them so that they in their turn may become competent instructors. Let not their budget of learning consist of a few polite ologies, lightly learned, to be as lightly forgotten. I believe men have better brains than women. Yet they lack in intuition. Women are keener of perception. Thus it would appear——”
Miss Susanna looked up from the paper. “That’s all,” she said abruptly. “I suppose he made a copy of this letter, finished it and sent it to the Marquis. I wished to read it to you because, in looking among his papers and letters, this is the first mention he made of his dream of building a college for women.”
For a moment no one spoke. The spell of the unfinished letter of long ago gripped the hearers. The generous, purposeful personality of its writer made itself felt across the years.
Jonas, trundling a tea wagon into the study, brought them out of the historic past.