The facilities for acquiring a good common education, of late years afforded to the masses, in which there was not so wide a distinction made between the sexes as formerly, have accomplished much in removing old-time prejudices; as the searching examinations of these public schools have fairly tested the capabilities of both boys and girls, and have established the fact that, with equal opportunities, the girls were fully equal to the boys in mental ability and attainments. Grudgingly, girls have been allowed to enter the grammar and higher schools; and here, too, by their proficiency, they have proved their right to enter.
There was a great outcry raised when the first genuine university which admitted women, allowed them to pursue precisely the same studies as young men. It was predicted that almost unheard-of evils would ensue. Woman, if they succeeded, would be unfitted for her "sphere," and become unwilling to soothe, with tender hand, the suffering and the distressed, etc. The wail was terrific. The experiment, however, succeeded. Women not only commenced a real collegiate course, but pursued it to the end, graduating with honors; and, despite prophecy, college-bred women made faithful wives, judicious mothers, and good housekeepers. A cruel war ravaged the fair fields of a portion of the United States, bringing with it its attendant train of misery. What was the employment of ladies who had graduated in universities in this crisis of their country? Had their knowledge of Latin and Greek made them either inefficient or hard? The weary, wounded soldier in the hospitals would testify that the kind hand of an educated and refined woman bathed his feverish temples, while her gentle voice breathed into his ear the glad tidings of a peace to be attained by repentance and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. Delicacies were needed for the invalid soldiers, and were not to be bought for money; the educated woman, side by side with her uneducated sister, bared her white arms above the elbow, and molded delicate pastry, and sealed and pickled and preserved as diligently and as deftly as if she had never demonstrated a problem in Euclid or heard of Sophocles. In what way had women become unfitted for their sphere by a liberal education? In no way whatever. If some highly educated women are inefficient housekeepers, and slatternly in their persons, so also are many who neither know how to read nor write; just as there are many impracticable, inefficient, and slovenly men who are highly educated, and ignorant men who are also incompetent and inefficient. Education has nothing to do with making either men or women inefficient; the inefficient would be inefficient to the end of time, though their minds were never troubled with literature.
No fearful calamity having ensued as a consequence of the admission of ladies to one university, others also began slowly, and with great caution, to open their doors to them; and now their admission on the same footing as their brothers to the same universities, and their capability to complete the same curriculum is no longer an experiment, but an established fact. Even in conservative, staid old England, ladies are admitted to the examinations at Cambridge. But all are by no means open. No: there are those, and some of them men of sense in other respects, who can not come down from the lofty pedestal on which they have placed themselves, and are not willing to allow their sisters or daughters to mount, lest they should reach their side. These sneer and frown, and prophesy evil just as vehemently as did narrow-minded men of the same class fifty or twenty years ago; and their influence will, for a time, keep some of the colleges closed to women. But this is a matter of little consequence now. There are universities now open to them of as high a literary grade as those which are closed against them; and consequently they may drink at will at the fountain of knowledge, despite the sneers and frowns of those who would prevent it if they could, but happily can not altogether.
Though there is still much fierce opposition to the movement for granting them equal civil and ecclesiastical rights and privileges, and for allowing them to compete fairly with men in business transactions or in the learned professions; and though it may be expected that this opposition will be continued for some time to come,—yet women have cause for thankful rejoicing, and may take courage. The long night of their bitter servitude is nearly over, the dawn of better days is beginning to tinge the horizon; and hope may now be entertained that erelong they shall occupy the position to which they are entitled, as man's compeer—the position of equality with him in all the relations of life—and enjoy the full rights and privileges of civilized and Christianized citizenship.
The morning is breaking.
CHAPTER VIII.
Famous Women of Antiquity.
It has been so often asserted that women are incompetent to form any thing like correct opinions on civil or political questions, or to govern with discretion, even when by chance the reins are committed to their control for a brief season; and that they have always been found so; and, also, that they are naturally incapable of a sufficiently great degree of mental effort to entitle them to celebrity,—that the statement has come to be regarded as a fact by the masses, who have lacked either the ability or the desire to investigate the matter. With the majority of men, as such assertions fostered their love of power, and the idea of their own self-consequence, it was natural for them to accept them without question, as undoubted truth. With women, until within the present century, the facilities for acquiring an education have been so meagre that, except where they were possessed of both a large fortune and an unlimited amount of perseverance, they had slight opportunities for acquiring accurate information on that or any other subject. What their fathers, husbands, or brothers told them, they might believe if they chose; for the rest, to the very large majority of women, history was a sealed book; so that, for want of correct information, they were not in a position to contradict any assertion, however extravagant, untruthful, or absurd it might be.