there, scattered in unlikely
places, where educated women, married and home-making, yet let their
surplus energy flow out into neighborhood betterment.

Mothers of families there must be, and far be it from me to say that
non-college women fail in that high office. There comes before me one
mother of fourteen children who has never seen the inside of a college
classroom, yet whom it would be hard to excel in her qualities of
motherliness. But, other things being equal, it is to the Christian,
educated mothers that we turn to find the life of the ideal home, with
real comradeship between wife and husband, with intelligent
understanding of the children, and the coveting for them of the best
that education can give.

One other question Mary Smith may rightly ask. What about the men's
colleges already existing? Will co-education not work in India?

To a certain limited extent it has. Rukkubai, with her too brief years
of freedom, proved its possibility. Others there have been, pioneer
souls, who pushed their way into lecture halls crowded with men, took
notes in the dark and undesirable remnants of space allotted to them,
and by dint of perseverance and hard work passed the examinations of the
University and carried off the coveted degree.

They were courageous women, deserving admiration. They won knowledge,
sometimes at heavy cost of health and nerve power. They helped to make
women's education possible. But what of the fairer side of college life
could they ever know? They were accepted always on sufferance; they
never "belonged." One such pioneer was a friend of mine. In many walks
and talks she told me of life in a men's college under the patronage of
the Maharajah of a native state. Loyal to her college, and proud of the
treasures of opportunity it had opened to her, she yet sighed for what
she had missed. "When I see the life of the girls in the Women's
Christian College at Madras," she said, "I feel that I have never been
to college."

Three times the girls and women of America have reached out hands across
the sea and either founded or helped to found Christian schools of
higher education for the women of India, with the belief that they have
a right to the knowledge of the spiritual truth which has brought to
Christian women of America development in righteousness, freedom of
faith, a personal knowledge of God through Jesus Christ, and the blessed
hope of immortality.

Isabella Thoburn College, Lucknow, 18