o find that Professor W.S. Tyler of Amherst
College, in his paper on "The Higher Education of Woman," in
_Scribner's Monthly_ for February, repeats the unfair statements
of President Eliot of Harvard, in regard to Oberlin College. The
fallacy and incorrectness of those statements were pointed out on
the spot by several, and were afterwards thoroughly shown by
President Fairchild of Oberlin; yet Professor Tyler repeats them
all. He asserts that there has been a great falling off in the
number of students in that college; he entirely ignores the
important fact of the great multiplication of colleges which
admit women; and he implies, if he does not assert, that the
separate ladies' course at Oberlin has risen as a substitute for
the regular college course. His words are these, the italics
being my own:

In Oberlin, where the experiment has been tried under the
most favorable circumstances, it has proved a failure so far
as the regular college course is concerned. The number of
young women in that course, instead of increasing with the
prosperity of the institution, _has diminished, so that it
now averages only two or three to a class_. The rest pursue
a different curriculum, live in a separate dormitory, and
study by themselves in a course of their own, reciting,
indeed, with the young men, and by way of reciprocity and in
true womanly compassion, allowing some of them to sit at
their table in the dining-hall, but yet constituting
substantially a female seminary, or, if you please, a
woman's college in the university.--_Scribner, February,
page 457._

Now, it was distinctly stated by President Fairchild last summer,
that this "different curriculum" was the course originally marked
out for women, and that the regular college course was an
after-thought. This disposes of the latter part of Professor
Tyler's statement. I revert, therefore, to his main statement,
that "the number of young women in the collegiate course has
diminished, so that it now averages only two or three to a
class." Any reader would suppose his meaning to be that taking
one year with another, and comparing later years with the early
years of Oberlin, there has been a diminution of women. What is