dualistic; it has fostered ambitions
for personal distinction, and has trained the faculties almost
exclusively in the direction of intellectual accumulation. Doubtless,
woman's education is at fault, in that it has failed to recognize
certain needs, and has failed to cultivate and guide the larger desires
of which all generous young hearts are full.
During the most formative years of life, it gives the young girl no
contact with the feebleness of childhood, the pathos of suffering, or
the needs of old age. It gathers together crude youth in contact only
with each other and with mature men and women who are there for the
purpose of their mental direction. The tenderest promptings are bidden
to bide their time. This could only be justifiable if a definite outlet
were provided when they leave college. Doubtless the need does not
differ widely in men and women, but women not absorbed in professional
or business life, in the years immediately following college, are baldly
brought face to face with the deficiencies of their training. Apparently
every obstacle is removed, and the college woman is at last free to
begin the active life, for which, during so many years, she has been
preparing. But during this so-called preparation, her faculties have
been trained solely for accumulation, and she has learned to utterly
distrust the finer impulses of her nature, which would naturally have
connected her with human interests outside of her family and her own
immediate social circle. All through school and college the young soul
dreamed of self-sacrifice, of succor to the helpless and of tenderness
to the unfortunate. We persistently distrust these desires, and, unless
they follow well-defined lines, we repress them with every device of
convention and caution.
One summer the writer went from a two weeks' residence in East London,
where she had become sick and bewildered by the sights and sounds
encountered there, directly to Switzerland. She found the beaten routes
of travel filled with young English men and women who could walk many
miles a day, and who could climb peaks so inaccessible that the feats
received honorable mention in Alpine journals,--a result which filled
their families with joy and pride. These young people knew to a nicety
the proper diet and clothing which would best contribute toward
endurance. Everything was very fine about them save their motive power.
The writer does not refer to the hard-worked men and wome
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