mentioned, on character in those features which are of especial
importance to women. Our people have here gained a new sense of beauty,
and of beauty at its highest and rarest, not the beauty of ornament and
decoration, but that of proportion, balance, and ordered suitability of
parts. Every girl likes pretty things, but the rational basis of beauty
in the harmonious expression of use, and in furnishing to the eye the
quiet satisfaction of its normal demands, seldom attracts attention. At
Chicago these things became apparent. Each building outwardly announced
its inner purpose. Each gained its effect mainly by outline and balance
of masses rather than by richness of detail. Each was designed in
reference to its site and to its neighbor buildings. Almost every one
rested the eye which it still stimulated. Color, form, purpose,
proportion, sculpture, vegetation, stretches of water, the brown earth,
all cooperated toward the happy effect. What visitor could see it and
not have begotten in him the demand for beauty in his own surroundings?
It is said that the Centennial Exhibition affected the domestic
architecture and the household decoration of the whole eastern seaboard.
The Fair will do the same, but it will bring about a beauty of a higher,
simpler sort. In people from every section, artistic taste has been
developed, or even created; and not only in their houses, but in the
architecture of their public buildings and streets shall we see the
results of this vision of the White City by the Lake. Huddled houses in
incongruous surroundings will become less common. At heart we Americans
are idealists, and at a time when the general wealth is rapidly
increasing, it is an indescribable gain to have had such a training of
the aesthetic sense as days among the great buildings and nights on the
lagoons have brought to millions of our people. The teachability of the
common American is almost pathetic. One building was always crowded--the
Fine Arts Building; yet great pictures were the one thing exhibited with
which Americans have hitherto had little or no acquaintance. This
beauty, connected essentially with the feminine side of life, will
hereafter, through the influence of the Fair, become a more usual
possession of us all.
If such are the permanent gains for character which women in common with
men, yet even more than they, have derived from the Fair, there remain
to be considered certain helps which have been brought to women in some
of their most distinctive occupations. Of course they have had here an
opportunity to compare the different kinds of sewing-machines, pianos,
type-writers, telegraphs, clothes-wringers, stoves, and baby-carriages,
and no doubt they will do their future work with these complicated
engines more effectively because of such comparative study. But there
are three departments which ancestral usage has especially consecrated
to women, and to intelligent methods in each of these the Fair has given
a mighty impulse. These three departments are the care of the home, the
care of the young, and the care of the sick, the poor, and the
depraved.
At Philadelphia in 1876 Vienna bread was made known, and the native
article, sodden with saleratus, which up to that time had desolated the
country, began to disappear. The results in cookery from the Chicago
Exhibition will be wider. They touch the kitchen with intelligence at
more points. Where tradition has reigned unquestioned, science is
beginning to penetrate, and we are no longer allowed to eat without
asking why and what. This new "domestic science"--threatening word--was
set forth admirably in the Rumford Kitchen, where a capital thirty-cent
luncheon was served every day, compounded of just those ingredients
which the human frame could be demonstrated to require. The health-food
companies, too, arrayed their appetizing wares. Workingmen's homes
showed on how small a sum a family could live, and live well.
Arrangements for sterilizing water and milk were there, Atkinson
cookers, gas and kerosene stoves. The proper sanitation of the home
was taught, and boards of health turned out to the plain gaze of the
world their inquisitorial processes. Numberless means of increasing
the health, ease, and happiness of the household with the least
expenditure of time and money were here studied by crowds of despairing
housekeepers. Many, no doubt, were bewildered; but many, too, went away
convinced that the most ancient employment of women was rising to the
dignity and attractiveness of a learned profession.
When it is remembered that nine tenths of the teachers of elementary
schools are women, it can be seen how important for them was the
magnificent educational exhibit. Here could be studied all that the age
counts best in kindergarten, primary, grammar, high and normal schools,
and in all the varieties of training in cookery, sewing, dressmaking,
manual training, drawing, painting, carving. Many of the exhibitors
showed great skill in making their methods apprehensible to the
stranger.
And then there were the modes of bodily training, and the lamentable
image of the misformed average girl; and in the children's building
classes could actually be seen engaged in happy exercise, and close at
hand appliances for the nursery and the playground. Nor in the enlarged
appliances for woman's domestic life must those be omitted which tell
how cheaply and richly the girl may now obtain a college training like
her brother, and become as intelligent as he. No woman went away from
the educational exhibits of the Fair in the belief that woman's sphere
was necessarily narrow.
There is no need to dilate on the light shed by the Fair upon problems
of sickness, poverty, and crime. Everybody knows that nothing so
complete had been seen before. The Anthropological Building was a museum
of these subjects, and scattered in other parts of the Fair was much to
interest the puzzled and sympathetic soul. One could find out what an
ideal hospital was like, and how its service and appliances should be
ordered. One studied under competent teachers the care of the dependent
and delinquent classes. One learned to distinguish surface charity from
sound. As men grow busier and women more competent, the guidance of
philanthropy passes continually more and more into the gentler hands.
Women serve largely on boards of hospitals, prisons, charities, and
reforms, and urgently feel the need of ampler knowledge. The Fair did
much to show them ways of obtaining it.
Such are the permanent results of the Fair most likely to affect
women. They fall into three classes: the proofs women have given of
their independent power, their ability to organize and to work toward
a distant, difficult, and complex end; the enlargement of their
outlook, manifesting itself in a new sense of membership in a
nation, a more willing obedience to law, and a higher appreciation of
beauty; and, lastly, the direct assistance given to women in their
more characteristic employments of housekeeping, teaching, and
ministering to the afflicted. That these are all, or even the most
important, results which each woman will judge she has obtained, is not
pretended. Everybody saw at the Fair something which brought to
individual him or her a gain incomparable.
And, after all, the greatest thing was the total, glittering, murmurous,
restful, magical, evanescent Fair itself, seated by the blue waters,
wearing the five crowns, served by novel boatmen, and with the lap so
full of treasure that as piece by piece it was held up, it shone, was
wondered at, and was lost again in the pile. This amazing spectacle will
flash for years upon the inward eye of our people, and be a joy of their
solitude.
FOOTNOTES:
[16] Published in _The Forum_ for December, 1891.
XVI
WHY GO TO COLLEGE?
To a largely increasing number of young girls college doors are opening
every year. Every year adds to the number of men who feel as a friend of
mine, a successful lawyer in a great city, felt when in talking of the
future of his four little children he said, "For the two boys it is not
so serious, but I lie down at night afraid to die and leave my daughters
only a bank account." Year by year, too, the experiences of life are
teaching mothers that happiness does not necessarily come to their
daughters when accounts are large and banks are sound, but that on the
contrary they take grave risks when they trust everything to accumulated
wealth and the chance of a happy marriage. Our American girls themselves
are becoming aware that they need the stimulus, the discipline, the
knowledge, the interests of the college in addition to the school, if
they are to prepare themselves for the most serviceable lives.
But there are still parents who say, "There is no need that my daughter
should teach; then why should she go to college?" I will not reply that
college training is a life insurance for a girl, a pledge that she
possesses the disciplined ability to earn a living for herself and
others in case of need; for I prefer to insist on the importance of
giving every girl, no matter what her present circumstances, a special
training in some one thing by which she can render society service, not
of amateur but of expert sort, and service too for which it will be
willing to pay a price. The number of families will surely increase who
will follow the example of an eminent banker whose daughters have been
given each her specialty. One has chosen music, and has gone far with
the best masters in this country and in Europe, so far that she now
holds a high rank among musicians at home and abroad. Another has taken
art; and has not been content to paint pretty gifts for her friends, but
in the studios of New York, Munich, and Paris she has won the right to
be called an artist, and in her studio at home to paint portraits which
have a market value. A third has proved that she can earn her living, if
need be, by her exquisite jellies, preserves, and sweetmeats. Yet the
house in the mountains, the house by the sea, and the friends in the
city are not neglected, nor are these young women found less attractive
because of their special accomplishments.
While it is not true that all girls should go to college any more than
that all boys should go, it is nevertheless true that they should go in
greater numbers than at present. They fail to go because they, their
parents, and their teachers, do not see clearly the personal benefits
distinct from the commercial value of a college training. I wish here to
discuss these benefits, these larger gifts of the college life,--what
they may be, and for whom they are waiting.
It is undoubtedly true that many girls are totally unfitted by home and
school life for a valuable college course. These joys and successes,
these high interests and friendships, are not for the self-conscious and
nervous invalid, nor for her who in the exuberance of youth recklessly
ignores the laws of a healthy life. The good society of scholars and of
libraries and laboratories has no place and no attraction for her who
finds no message in Plato, no beauty in mathematical order, and who
never longs to know the meaning of the stars over her head or the
flowers under her feet. Neither will the finer opportunities of college
life appeal to one who, until she is eighteen (is there such a girl in
this country?), has felt no passion for the service of others, no desire
to know if through history, or philosophy, or any study of the laws of
society, she can learn why the world is so sad, so hard, so selfish as
she finds it, even when she looks upon it from the most sheltered life.
No, the college cannot be, should not try to be, a substitute for the
hospital, reformatory, or kindergarten. To do its best work it should be
organized for the strong, not for the weak; for the high-minded,
self-controlled, generous, and courageous spirits, not for the
indifferent, the dull, the idle, or those who are already forming their
characters on the amusement theory of life. All these perverted young
people may, and often do, get large benefit and invigoration, new
ideals, and unselfish purposes from their four years' companionship with
teachers and comrades of a higher physical, mental, and moral stature
than their own. I have seen girls change so much in college that I have
wondered if their friends at home would know them,--the voice, the
carriage, the unconscious manner, all telling a story of new tastes and
habits and loves and interests, that had wrought out in very truth a new
creature. Yet in spite of this I have sometimes thought that in college
more than elsewhere the old law holds, "To him that hath shall be given
and he shall have abundance, but from him who hath not shall be taken
away even that which he seemeth to have." For it is the young life which
is open and prepared to receive which obtains the gracious and uplifting
influences of college days. What, then, for such persons are the rich
and abiding rewards of study in college or university?
Preeminently the college is a place of education. That is the ground of
its being. We go to college to know, assured that knowledge is sweet and
powerful, that a good education emancipates the mind and makes us
citizens of the world. No college which does not thoroughly educate can
be called good, no matter what else it does. No student who fails to get
a little knowledge on many subjects, and much knowledge on some, can be
said to have succeeded, whatever other advantages she may have found by
the way. It is a beautiful and significant fact that in all times the
years of learning have been also the years of romance. Those who love
girls and boys pray that our colleges may be homes of sound learning,
for knowledge is the condition of every college blessing. "Let no man
incapable of mathematics enter here," Plato is reported to have
inscribed over his Academy door. "Let no one to whom hard study is
repulsive hope for anything from us," American colleges might
paraphrase. Accordingly in my talk to-day I shall say little of the
direct benefits of knowledge which the college affords. These may be
assumed. It is on their account that one knocks at the college door. But
seeking this first, a good many other things are added. I want to point
out some of these collateral advantages of going to college, or rather
to draw attention to some of the many forms in which the winning of
knowledge presents itself.
The first of these is happiness. Everybody wants "a good time,"
especially every girl in her teens. A good time, it is true, does not
always in these years mean what it will mean by and by, any more than
the girl of eighteen plays with the doll which entranced the child of
eight. It takes some time to discover that work is the best sort of
play, and some people never discover it at all. But when mothers ask
such questions as these: "How can I make my daughter happy?" "How can I
give her the best society?" "How can she have a good time?" the answer
in most cases is simple. Send her to college--to almost any college.
Send her because there is no other place where between eighteen and
twenty-two she is so likely to have a genuinely good time. Merely for
good times, for romance, for society, college life offers unequalled
opportunities. Of course no idle person can possibly be happy, even for
a day, nor she who makes a business of trying to amuse herself. For full
happiness, though its springs are within, we want health and friends and
work and objects of aspiration. "We live by admiration, hope, and love,"
says Wordsworth. The college abounds in all three. In the college time
new powers are sprouting, and intelligence, merriment, truthfulness, and
generosity are more natural than the opposite qualities often become in
later years. An exhilarating atmosphere pervades the place. We who are
in it all the time feel that we live at the fountain of perpetual youth,
and those who take but a four years' bath in it become more cheerful,
strong, and full of promise than they are ever likely to find
themselves again; for a college is a kind of compendium of the things
that most men long for. It is usually planted in a beautiful spot, the
charm of trees and water being added to stately buildings and
stimulating works of art. Venerable associations of the past hallow its
halls. Leaders in the stirring world of to-day return at each
Commencement to share the fresh life of the new class. Books, pictures,
music, collections, appliances in every field, learned teachers,
mirthful friends, athletics for holidays, the best words of the best men
for holy days,--all are here. No wonder that men look back upon their
college life as upon halcyon days, the romantic period of youth. No
wonder that Dr. Holmes's poems to his Harvard classmates find an echo in
college reunions everywhere; and gray-haired men, who outside the
narrowing circle of home have not heard their first names for years,
remain Bill and Joe and John and George to college comrades, even if
unseen for more than a generation.
Yet a girl should go to college not merely to obtain four happy years,
but to make a second gain, which is often overlooked, and is little
understood even when perceived; I mean a gain in health. The old notion
that low vitality is a matter of course with women; that to be delicate
is a mark of superior refinement, especially in well-to-do families;
that sickness is a dispensation of Providence,--these notions meet with
no acceptance in college. Years ago I saw in the mirror frame of a
college freshman's room this little formula: "Sickness is carelessness,
carelessness is selfishness, and selfishness is sin." And I have often
noticed among college girls an air of humiliation and shame when obliged
to confess a lack of physical vigor, as if they were convicted of
managing life with bad judgment, or of some moral delinquency. With the
spreading scientific conviction that health is a matter largely under
each person's control, that even inherited tendencies to disease need
not be allowed to run their riotous course unchecked, there comes an
earnest purpose to be strong and free. Fascinating fields of knowledge
are waiting to be explored; possibilities of doing, as well as of
knowing, are on every side; new and dear friendships enlarge and sweeten
dreams of future study and work, and the young student cannot afford
quivering nerves or small lungs or an aching head any more than bad
taste, rough manners, or a weak will. Handicapped by inheritance or bad
training, she finds the plan of college life itself her supporter and
friend. The steady, long-continued routine of mental work, physical
exercise, recreation, and sleep, the simple and wholesome food, in place
of irregular and unstudied diet, work out salvation for her. Instead of
being left to go out of doors when she feels like it, the regular
training of the gymnasium, the boats on lake and river, the tennis
court, the golf links, the basket ball, the bicycle, the long walk among
the woods in search of botanical or geological specimens,--all these and
many more call to the busy student, until she realizes that they have
their rightful place in every well-ordered day of every month. So she
learns, little by little, that buoyant health is a precious possession
to be won and kept.
It is significant that already statistical investigation in this country
and in England shows that the standard of health is higher among the
women who hold college degrees than among any other equal number of the
same age and class. And it is interesting also to observe to what sort
of questions our recent girl graduates have been inclined to devote
attention. They have been largely the neglected problems of little
children and their health, of home sanitation, of food and its choice
and preparation, of domestic service, of the cleanliness of schools and
public buildings. Colleges for girls are pledged by their very
constitution to make persistent war on the water cure, the nervine
retreat, the insane asylum, the hospital,--those bitter fruits of the
emotional lives of thousands of women. "I can never afford a sick
headache again, life is so interesting and there is so much to do," a
delicate girl said to me at the end of her first college year. And while
her mother was in a far-off invalid retreat, she undertook the battle
against fate with the same intelligence and courage which she put into
her calculus problems and her translations of Sophocles. Her beautiful
home and her rosy and happy children prove the measure of her hard-won
success. Formerly the majority of physicians had but one question for
the mother of the nervous and delicate girl, "Does she go to school?"
And only one prescription, "Take her out of school." Never a suggestion
as to suppers of pickles and pound-cake, never a hint about midnight
dancing and hurried daytime ways. But now the sensible doctor asks,
"What are her interests? What are her tastes? What are her habits?" And
he finds new interests for her, and urges the formation of out-of-door
tastes and steady occupation for the mind, in order to draw the morbid
girl from herself into the invigorating world outside. This the college
does largely through its third gift of friendship.
Until a girl goes away from home to school or college, her friends are
chiefly chosen for her by circumstances. Her young relatives, her
neighbors in the same street, those who happen to go to the same school
or church,--these she makes her girlish intimates. She goes to college
with the entire conviction, half unknown to herself, that her father's
political party contains all the honest men, her mother's social circle
all the true ladies, her church all the real saints of the community.
And the smaller the town, the more absolute is her belief. But in
college she finds that the girl who earned her scholarship in the
village school sits beside the banker's daughter; the New England
farmer's child rooms next the heiress of a Hawaiian sugar plantation;
the daughters of the opposing candidates in a sharply fought election
have grown great friends in college boats and laboratories; and before
her diploma is won she realizes how much richer a world she lives in
than she ever dreamed of at home. The wealth that lies in differences
has dawned upon her vision. It is only when the rich and poor sit down
together that either can understand how the Lord is the Maker of them
all.
To-day above all things we need the influence of men and women of
friendliness, of generous nature, of hospitality to new ideas, in short,
of social imagination. But instead, we find each political party
bitterly calling the other dishonest, each class suspicious of the
intentions of the other, and in social life the pettiest standards of
conduct. Is it not well for us that the colleges all over the country
still offer to their fortunate students a society of the most democratic
sort,--one in which a father's money, a mother's social position, can
assure no distinction and make no close friends? Here capacity of every
kind counts for its full value. Here enthusiasm waits to make heroes of
those who can lead. Here charming manners, noble character, amiable
temper, scholarly power, find their full opportunity and inspire such
friendships as are seldom made afterward. I have forgotten my chemistry,
and my classical philology cannot bear examination; but all round the
world there are men and women at work, my intimates of college days, who
have made the wide earth a friendly place to me. Of every creed, of
every party, in far-away places and in near, the thought of them makes
me more courageous in duty and more faithful to opportunity, though for
many years we may not have had time to write each other a letter. The
basis of all valuable and enduring friendships is not accident or
juxtaposition, but tastes, interests, habits, work, ambitions. It is for
this reason that to college friendship clings a romance entirely its
own. One of the friends may spend her days in the laboratory, eagerly
chasing the shy facts that hide beyond the microscope's fine vision, and
the other may fill her hours and her heart with the poets and the
philosophers; one may steadfastly pursue her way toward the command of a
hospital, and the other toward the world of letters and of art; these
divergences constitute no barrier, but rather an aid to the fulness of
friendship. And the fact that one goes in a simple gown which she has
earned and made herself, and the other lives when at home in a
merchant's modern palace--what has that to do with the things the girls
care about and the dreams they talk over in the walk by the river or the
bicycle ride through country roads? If any young man to-day goes through
Harvard lonely, neglected, unfriended, if any girl lives solitary and
wretched in her life at Wellesley, it is their own fault. It must be
because they are suspicious, unfriendly, or disagreeable themselves.
Certainly it is true that in the associations of college life, more than
in any other that the country can show, what is extraneous, artificial,
and temporary falls away, and the every-day relations of life and work
take on a character that is simple, natural, genuine. And so it comes
about that the fourth gift of college life is ideals of personal
character.