THE EDUCATION OF ELIZABETH
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THE EDUCATION OF ELIZABETH
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From Miss Elizabeth Stockton
to Miss Carolyn Sawyer
Lowell, Mass., Sept. 10, 189-.
My dearest Carol: The thing we have both wished so much has happened! Papa has finally consented to let me go to college! It has taken a long time and a great deal of persuasion, and Mamma never cared anything about it, you know, herself. But I laid it before her in a way that I really am ashamed of! I never thought I'd do anything like it! But I had to, it seemed to me. I told her that she had often spoken of what a mistake Mrs. Hall made in letting Marjory come out so soon, and that I should certainly be unwilling to stay at Mrs. Meade's another year. I'm doing advanced work now, and I'm terribly bored. The girls all seem so very young, somehow! And I said that I couldn't come out till I was twenty-two, if I went to college. I teased so that she gave way, but we had a terrible siege with Papa. He is the dearest man in the world, but just a little tiny bit prejudiced, you know. He wants me to finish at Mrs. Meade's and then go abroad for a year or two. He wants me to do something with my music. But I told him of the fine Music School there was at Smith, and how much harder I should work there, naturally. He talked a good deal about the art advantages and travel and French—you know what I think about the terrible narrowness of a boarding-school education! It is shameful, that an intellectual girl of this century should be tied down to French and Music! And how can the scrappy little bit of gallery sight-seeing that I should do possibly equal four years of earnest, intelligent, regular college work? He said something about marriage—oh, dear! It is horrible that one should have to think of that! I told him, with a great deal of dignity and rather coldly, I'm afraid, that my life would be, I hoped, something more than the mere evanescent glitter of a social butterfly! I think it really impressed him. He said, "Oh, very well—very well!" So I'm coming, dearest, and you must write me all about what books I'd better get and just what I'd better know of the college customs. I'm so glad you're on the campus. You know Uncle Wendell knows the President very well indeed—he was in college with him—and, somehow or other, I've got a room in the Lawrence, though we didn't expect it so soon! I feel inspired already when I think of the chapel and the big Science Building and that beautiful library! I've laid out a course of work that Miss Beverly—that's the literature teacher—thinks very ambitious, but I am afraid she doesn't realize the intention of a college, which is a little different, I suppose, from a boarding-school(!) I have planned to take sixteen hours for the four years. I must say I think it's rather absurd to limit a girl to that who really is perfectly able to do more. Perhaps you could see the Register—if that's what it is—and tell him I could just as well take eighteen, and then I could do that other Literature. I must go to try on something—really, it's very hard to convince Mamma that Smith isn't a summer resort! Good-by, dearest, we shall have such beautiful times together—I'm sure you'll be as excited as I am. We shall for once see as much of each other as we want to—I wish I could study with you! I'm coming up on the 8.20 Wednesday morning.
Devotedly yours,
Elizabeth.
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From Miss Carolyn Sawyer
to Miss Elizabeth Stockton