our education in its varied forms and guises ceases only with our lives, but it is none the less true that the more concentrated forms of intellectual application and acquisition are limited for the ordinary woman to the earlier years of plasticity and leisure. The college woman is not, however, made merely passively contented by the richness of human experience which is offered her; she does not use her fertile memory and her stimulated imagination to mix a magic potion to bring forgetfulness of her own personal daily problems. Rather does she use them in constructing that flowing road to happiness which is none other than the gaining of a proper and true perspective through the standardizing of one's joys and sorrows by the experiences of others.

Out of the narrowness and limitations of the ordinary woman's experience is born that detailed consciousness, with its dogging shadows of personal responsibility, personal interpretation and regret, which makes so many women's lives petty and mean. Forever revolving about the round of their own failures and successes, the demands of their children and husbands, the criticisms of their neighbors, the countless intimate details of daily life, they find the blight of the personal over all their lives. A woman's successes are so personal that they often lack the generous force of inspiration; her failures carry so much bitterness of individual responsibility that they fail to produce a strengthening development. The broad sweep of external, uncontrollable forces, the frank brutality, and perforce gracious acceptance of the inevitable, which lifts her husband out of himself and educates him in the truest sense, pass her sheltered corner by. And in this lies her weakness. A college president, at the close of a life nobly lived in spite of many obstacles, was asked to give a body of students the vital results of his experience; his working formula, as it were, for right living. "Gentlemen," he said, "I have given your request my earnest consideration and I can say to you in reply this,' When it rains, let it rain."" If women could but learn this lesson, the victory over the pettiness of their own lives would be won, their salvation would be well-nigh accomplished. The college, by its offering of a knowledge and understanding of life, stands

ready to teach the lesson. The college woman learns, perforce, that life's successes have been built up of the strength which calmly accepts the inevitable, the courage which turns wearying regret for the past into sturdy resolve for the future, the wisdom which apportions to each joy and sorrow its proper value.

It would seem to me, therefore, as beyond the possibility of denial, that from the limitations of woman's ordinary environment acting upon and accelerating the inherent weaknesses of woman's character, is born the need and the justification of that higher type of education which is most easily and naturally found in the woman's college.

But although the college has so splendidly justified itself by its works, yet women are even now daring to ask that it do more. They are heartily grateful for its strengthening culture, and yet they are not satisfied. Taught to conquer the kingdoms of the moral and intellectual world, they still long for the skill to conquer their own particular material kingdom, the home. Built close to the model of the man's college, knowing no deficiencies in those early days when its students asked of it mainly preparation for teaching, the woman's college of to-day is lamentably weak where it should be most strong. Unlike the man's college, it has not the excuse of being the broad gateway to the specialized technical school. For the majority of women it is distinctly the climax of their learning. Beyond it there is only life in the fullness of its demands for specific duties to be skillfully done. And on the manner of their doing hang the comfort, the happiness, yes, at times, even the lives of others. How is a woman specifically prepared for her woman's field, the home, by the four years which she has given to the college?

Superficially, it would seem as though she were prepared not at all. The courses which are offered her are so largely of a cultural nature, they deal so little with the practical aspects of her woman's work, they engage her interest in subjects' so far afield from the activities of daily life, that any possible adaptation of her life to its demands because of her college training seems impossible. And yet this is not so. Fortunately for her, the human mind is not an instrument, which, when

sharpened for one purpose, is dulled for all others. Fortunately for her there is born of all conscientious study a general intellectual attitude, a poise of mind, a view point which makes every problem, no matter how commonplace, worthy of a scientific solution. Such an attitude tears away the hide-bound wrappings of prejudice; it demands the why and the wherefore of convention; it stands eager and unabashed in the face of criticism; it brings to the wearisome details of living the fresh enthusiasm, the cheering strength, the clear sight of a mind trained in precision and vigor of thought.

This is indeed much; but that it should be deemed sufficient can be due only to the fact that college education for women is after all only in its infancy. It has survived in spite of such dire predictions, it has developed into such a sturdy infant that its enemies are abashed, its friends unduly elated. In the beginning, that it should live, and, living, that it should grow in physical strength, had been all their care. And so it has been that the lines of its development have been carelessly left to tradition and convention. This was made easier by the fact that the man's college offered such a convenient model for imitation, a model which in the early days, when the majority of women demanded preparation for teaching, was eminently satisfactory. But with the passing of the days of infancy is passing also the right of imitation to usurp the place of a strong independent development along lines which shall make possible the molding of woman to the uses of her life.

Curiously, one might well say providentially, just at the time when the college stands on the threshold of its possibilities of influence, the daily life of woman has entered the sphere of that influence. After all these weary years of following in the ruts made by past generations of women, of learning wisdom by experience, with much waste of energy and of things material, with much bitterness of heart and chastening of spirit, we are at last recognizing and developing a theory as well as a practice of household management. All the homely facts which make life run smoothly and cheerily, and on which its intellectual and moral greatness depend, are being formed into a body of classified knowledge, which is to-day rising to the

grade of science. Domestic economy and nutrition, sanitation, personal hygiene and many other clearly established branches of science, now stand ready to furnish woman with such a technical equipment for her life work as every man deems essential for his.

And yet, to-day, the majority of women's colleges stand aloof from these sciences to a remarkable degree. To a woman whose eagerness for a full equipment is born of her realization of its necessity, they seem fairly perverse in their studied avoidance of them. They will teach her languages of any known degree of antiquity, that she may be cultured; they will guide her through a maze of metaphysic, that she may learn to argue with subtlety; they will teach her art and architecture, science and mathematics, anything or everything, provided only that at no point does it too intimately concern itself with the concrete future before her. She may, for example, learn in detail how the German tribes lived, how they dressed, what they ate and drank, because that has outlived the offense of being utilitarian, and can be dignified by the name of Germanic antiquities; but how she herself and those dependent upon her should live-ah, that is a different matter, which has acquired not even the flavor of culture.

It is seemingly in vain for a woman to plead before the bar of the ordinary woman's college that she must know her future work in its technical aspect, since the material and mental welfare of a certain number of human beings waits on her knowledge. It is seemingly in vain for her to argue that general culture and ripened intellectual power do not in themselves furnish the concrete solution to the concrete problems which are set for her to answer. It is in vain that she points out that in spite of her culture and her education she constitutes to-day, by her ignorance of material values, one of the most serious sources of waste in the economic world, inasmuch as she is the purchasing agent for that most important unit of society, the family, which through her childlike ignorance is put at the mercy of the butcher, the baker and the candlestick maker. The untrained woman wastes on a conservative average twentyfive per cent of the purchasing power of the money of which

she has the spending, because she has, for example, no scientific knowledge of foods, their nutritive values, their varied and economic preparations, their qualities; because she has so little knowledge of clothing materials, their structure, composition and wearing qualities. In woman's unfitness for this form of her work lies the incentive to shoddiness, which taints the reputation of many American manufactures.

In material things the results of such ignorance are lamentable enough; but when the health, strength and happiness of the family are at issue, then it is well-nigh criminal. To the arms of a college educated woman a baby comes. Instantly begins the demand for concrete physiological knowledge. Anguished by the sense of her impotence, many a woman would fling away with one hand a goodly share of her academic knowledge, if with the other she might but grasp a few of those definite scientific facts which would teach her the strong and healthful living.

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In intrusting the most formative period of her life to the college, she has accepted, for better or for worse, its decision as to her training. If it elects to teach her as men are taught, and then bids her look for the technical training of her life work, not to a professional school, but to that school for which most women alone have time, life itself, then she must weigh well the question whether her college training has justified the heavy cost which the school of experience will exact of her ignorance.

Personally, I believe that it is worth the cost; that the knowledge and understanding of the broad outlines of human life which the college gives are so essential to the limited experience and view point of the average woman as to be of surpass-. ing value. And yet I believe none the less firmly that the time will come, and come right quickly, when in the woman's college general culture and careful scientific training for her life work will go hand in hand. Then the college woman graduate will add to the charm of the scholar and the skill of the teacher, the efficiency of the scientifically trained wife and mother. Then, and not until then, will the woman's college have established its full right to four of the most valuable years of a woman's life.