ears old.

Those 418 Yale husbands lost 147 wives before full middle age.

It ceases, therefore, to be surprising, though it remains unabatedly
sickening, that the stories of the careers of colonial college men, of
the best-bred men of the times, are filled with such details as:

"----First wife died at twenty-four, leaving six children."

"----Eight children born within twelve years, two of them
feeble-minded."

"----First wife died at nineteen, leaving three children."

"----Fourteen children. First wife died at twenty-eight, having
borne eight children in ten years."

From that age of universal early marrying and of promiscuous early
dying we have come in two centuries to an age of delayed (and even
omitted) marrying and of a settled determination to keep on living.

The women's colleges are so new and they attracted in their early days
so un-average a sort of girl that their records are not conclusive.
Nevertheless, here are some guiding facts from Smith College, of
Northampton, Massachusetts:

(We are taking college facts not because this chapter is confined in
any respect to college people, but merely because the matrimonial
histories in the records of the colleges are the most complete we know
of.)

In 1888, Smith College, in its first ten classes, had graduated 370
women.

In 1903, fifteen years later, among those 370 women there were 212 who
were still single.

This record does not satisfy Mr. G. Stanley Hall, who figured it out.
The remaining facts, however, might be considered more cheering:

The 158 Smith women who had married had borne 315 children. This
was two for each of them. And most of them were still in their
childbearing period. Compare this with the colonial records. But don't
take the number of children per colonial father. Be fair. Take it per
mother.

We have the matrimonial histories of colonial Yale and Harvard men
grouped and averaged according to the decade in which they were
graduated. We will regard the graduates of each decade as together
constituting one case.

In no case does the average number of children per wife go higher than
3.89. In one case it goes as low as 2.98.

Perhaps the modern wife's habit of going on living and thereby
protracting her period of childbearing will in time cause her
fertility record to compare not unfavorably with that of the colonial
wife, who made an early start but a quick finish.

In the year 1903, among all the 370 Smi