e. By her side, the girl who has left
school at eighteen, and has lived four years in the world, is weighted
with experience. The extension of youth is surely as great a boon
to women as to men. There is time enough ahead of all of us in which
to grow old and circumspect. For four years the student's interests
have been keen and concentrated, the healthy, limited interests of
a community. For four years her pleasures have been simple and sane.
For four years her ambitions, like the ambitions of her college
brother, have been as deeply concerned with athletics as with
text-books. She has had a better chance for physical development than
if she had "come out" at eighteen. Her college life has been
exceptionally happy, because its complications have been few, and
its freedom as wide as wisdom would permit. The system of
self-government, now introduced into the colleges, has justified
itself beyond all questioning. It has promoted a clear understanding
of honour, it has taught the student the value of discipline, it has
lent dignity to the routine of her life.

Some reverence for the laws ourselves have made,

is surely the first and best lesson which the citizen of a republic
needs to learn.

Writers on educational themes have pointed out--with tremors of
apprehension--that while a woman student working among men at a
foreign university is mentally stimulated by her surroundings,
stimulated often to the point of scholarship, her development is not
uniform and normal. She is always in danger of sinking her femininity,
or of overemphasizing it. In the former case, she loses charm and
personality; in the latter, sanity and balance. From both perils the
college woman in the United States is happily exempt. President
Jordan offers as a plea for co-education the healthy sense of
companionship between boy and girl students. "There is less of
silliness and folly," he says, "where man is not a novelty." But,
in truth, this particular form of silliness and folly is at a discount
in every woman's college, simply because the interests and
occupations which crowd the student's day leave little room for its
expansion.

The three best things about the college life of girls are its attitude
towards money (an attitude which contrasts sharply with that of many
private schools), its attitude towards social disparities, and its
attitude towards men. The atmosphere of the college is reasonably
democratic. Like gravitates towards like, an