It is reasonably safe to assume from a story in the New York Tribune
that the late Henry Harland, the novelist, was seldom kept after school
in his boyhood.
Among Harland's early teachers was a charming young lady, who called him
up in class one morning and said to him:
"Henry, name some of the chief beauties of education."
"Schoolmistresses," the boy answered, smiling into his teacher's pretty
eyes.
--_From Youth's Companion._
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John Ruskin, in one of his lectures, said: "There is just this
difference between the making of a girl's character and a boy's: You may
chisel a boy into shape as you would a rock, or hammer him into it, if
he be of a better kind, as you would a piece of bronze; but you can not
hammer a girl into anything. She grows as a flower does--she will wither
without sun; she will decay in her sheath as a narcissus will if you do
not give her air enough; she must take her own fair form and way if she
take any, and in mind as in body, must have always--
"'Her household motions light and free,
And steps of virgin liberty.'"
You bring up your girls as if they were meant for sideboard ornaments,
and then complain of their frivolity. Give them the same advantages
that you give their brothers; teach them, that courage and truth are the
pillars of their being.
Again: "The man's work for his own home, is to secure its maintenance,
progress, and defence; the woman's to secure its order, comfort, and
loveliness.
"What the man is at his own gate, defending it if need be, against
insult and spoil, that also, not in a less, but in a more devoted
measure, he is to be at the gate of his country, leaving his home, if
need be, even to the spoiler, to do his more incumbent work there.
"And in like manner what the woman is to be within her gates, as the
centre of order, the balm of distress, and the mirror of beauty, that
she is also to be without her gates, where order is more difficult,
distress more imminent, loveliness more rare."
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You can lead a boy to college, but you can't make him think.
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