must be resourceful and
possess good judgment]

The student who takes up college work, not as a specialized training,
but as a completion of her general education, stands somewhat by
herself. Such a girl may perhaps put off vocational decision until she
is part way through her college years. The college sometimes awakens
ambitions and brings to light abilities not hitherto discovered; and
even when this does not occur, the choice may be made from the highest
and most responsible positions filled by women. From the college girls
we draw our high-school teachers and college instructors, our
doctors, lawyers, and preachers, in so far as these professions are
filled by women.

[Illustration: Photograph by Brown Bros.
Among the many vocations belonging to the service group teaching is
one of the most popular]

We are confronted by the statement, made again and again and
reinforced by formidable rows of figures, that the more training a
girl receives, the less she is inclined to marry or, if she does
marry, to have children. The fact seems undeniable that in our larger
eastern women's colleges, at least, not more than half the graduates
marry up to the age of forty, which we may accept as the probable
limit of the marriage age for the average woman. The natural inference
is that a college education in some way prevents or discourages
marriage. This may or may not be true. To be quite fair, the
statistics should cover the coeducational colleges as well as the
colleges for women alone. Also some attempt should be made to
discover how the likelihood of marriage is affected by the age at
which girls finish their college course. Do the younger girls of a
college class marry, while the older ones do not? Are the younger
married graduates more often mothers than the older ones, or do they
have more children?

[Illustration: Photograph by Brown Bros.
The influence of the librarian extends far beyond the walls of the
library]

If it is true that training is interfering with marriage and
motherhood for our girls, the next step is not necessarily, as some
modern hysterical students of the question seem to suggest, that we
immediately cut out the training which, in case they do marry, will
make them far more valuable wives, mothers, and members of the
community; but rather so to time and place the training, and if
necessary so to alter its character, that any such tendency away from
marriage will be removed and that the trained