put their charms in marble, all the antique
galleries would close up and go out of business.

But it must be understood that in regard to them, as to the dictionaries,
it is necessary to "get the best." Not all women are equally interesting,
and some of those on whom most educational money is lavished are the
least so. It can be said broadly that everybody is interesting up to a
certain point. There is no human being from whom the inquiring mind
cannot learn something. It is so with women. Some are interesting for
five minutes, some for ten, some for an hour; some are not exhausted in a
whole day; and some (and this shows the signal leniency of Providence)
are perennially entertaining, even in the presence of masculine
stupidity. Of course the radical trouble of this world is that there are
not more people who are interesting comrades, day in and day out, for a
lifetime. It is greatly to the credit of American women that so many of
them have this quality, and have developed it, unprotected, in free
competition with all countries which have been pouring in women without
the least duty laid upon their grace or beauty. We, have a tariff upon
knowledge--we try to shut out all of that by a duty on books; we have a
tariff on piety and intelligence in a duty on clergymen; we try to
exclude art by a levy on it; but we have never excluded the raw material
of beauty, and the result is that we can successfully compete in the
markets of the world.

This, however, is a digression. The reader wants to know what this
quality of being interesting has to do with girls' schools. It is
admitted that if one goes into a new place he estimates the agreeableness
of it according to the number of people it contains with whom it is a
pleasure to converse, who have either the ability to talk well or the
intelligence to listen appreciatingly even if deceivingly, whose society
has the beguiling charm that makes even natural scenery satisfactory. It
is admitted also that in our day the burden of this end of life, making
it agreeable, is mainly thrown upon women. Men make their business an
excuse for not being entertaining, or the few who cultivate the mind
(aside from the politicians, who always try to be winning) scarcely think
it worth while to contribute anything to make society bright and
engaging. Now if the girls' schools and colleges, technical and other,
merely add to the number of people who have practical training and
knowledge without pe