Destroyed by subtleties these women are.
George Meredith’s prayer for us, “more brain, O Lord, more brain!” we shall still need when “votes for women” has become an outworn slogan.
No one claims that character is produced only by college training or any other form of education. There are illiterate women whose wills are so steady, whose hearts are so generous, and whose spirits seem to be so continuously refreshed that we look up to them with reverence. They have their own fountains. It would be a mistake to suppose that because they are “open at the outlet” they are “closed at the reservoir.” But there is a class of women who are impelled toward knowledge (as still others are impelled toward music or art) and whose success in anything [pg 195]they do will depend upon their state of mind. We ought to assume that the girls who go to college belong to this class, however far from the springs of Helicon they mean to march in the future. It is a terrible thing that we should think of taking one hour of their time while they are in college for any course that does not enrich the intellect and add to the treasury of thoughts and ideas upon which the woman with a mind will always be drawing. Spirit is greater than intellect, and may survive it in the course of a long life. But in the active years, for this kind of woman, the mental life becomes one with the spiritual. A lusty serviceableness will issue from their union. If mental interests seem sterile, the cure, as far as the college is concerned with it, is to deepen, not to lessen the love of learning. The renewal of sincerity, humility and enthusiasm in the age-old search for truth is more necessary than the introduction of new courses, which must be applied to be of value, and which at this time in a girl’s experience, and under these conditions, can give only partial and superficial data.
Our lives are subject to a thousand changes. In the home as well as out of it, we shall meet, face to face, fruition and disappointment, rapture and pain, hope and despair. In these tests of the soul’s health what good will domestic science do us? Not by sanitation is sanity brought forth. Women do not gather courage from calories, nor faith from refrigerators. But every added milestone along the road from youth to age shows us the truth of Cicero’s claim, made after he had borne public care and known private grief, for the faithful, homely companionship of intellectual studies: “For other things belong neither to all times and ages nor all places; but these pursuits feed our growing years, bring charm to ripened age, adorn prosperity, offer a refuge and solace to adversity, delight us at home, do not handicap us abroad, abide with us through the watches of the night, go with us on our travels, make holiday with us in the country.”
[pg 196]Upon women, in crucial hours, may depend the peace of the old, the fortune of the middle-aged, the hopefulness of the young. In such an hour we do not wish to be dismissed as were the women of Socrates’s family, who had had no part in the bright life of the Athens of which he was taking leave. Shall we become the bread in the sacrament of life, ourselves unfed? the fire on the hearth, ourselves unkindled?
The Land of the Sleepless Watchdog
If from almost any given point in the United States you start out towards the Southwest, you will reach in time the Land of the Sleepless Watchdog. On each of the scattered farms, defending it against all intruders, you will find a band of eager and vociferous dogs—dogs who magnify their calling because they have no other, and who, by the same token lose all sense of proportion in life. It is “theirs not to reason why,” but to put up warnings and threats, and to be ready for the fight that never comes.