r to be interesting? We
hear a good deal about the highly educated young woman with reverence,
about the emancipated young woman with fear and trembling, but what can
take the place of the interesting woman? Anxiety is this moment agitating
the minds of tens of thousands of mothers about the education of their
daughters. Suppose their education should be directed to the purpose of
making them interesting women, what a fascinating country this would be
about the year 1900.

GIVE THE MEN A CHANCE

Give the men a chance. Upon the young women of America lies a great
responsibility. The next generation will be pretty much what they choose
to make it; and what are they doing for the elevation of young men? It is
true that there are the colleges for men, which still perform a good
work--though some of them run a good deal more to a top-dressing of
accomplishments than to a sub-soiling of discipline--but these colleges
reach comparatively few. There remain the great mass who are devoted to
business and pleasure, and only get such intellectual cultivation as
society gives them or they chance to pick up in current publications. The
young women are the leisure class, consequently--so we hear--the
cultivated class. Taking a certain large proportion of our society, the
women in it toil not, neither do they spin; they do little or no domestic
work; they engage in no productive occupation. They are set apart for a
high and ennobling service--the cultivation of the mind and the rescue of
society from materialism. They are the influence that keeps life elevated
and sweet--are they not? For what other purpose are they set apart in
elegant leisure? And nobly do they climb up to the duties of their
position. They associate together in esoteric, intellectual societies.
Every one is a part of many clubs, the object of which is knowledge and
the broadening of the intellectual horizon. Science, languages,
literature, are their daily food. They can speak in tongues; they can
talk about the solar spectrum; they can interpret Chaucer, criticise
Shakespeare, understand Browning. There is no literature, ancient or
modern, that they do not dig up by the roots and turn over, no history
that they do not drag before the club for final judgment. In every little
village there is this intellectual stir and excitement; why, even in New
York, readings interfere with the german;--['Dances', likely referring to
the productions of the Straus family in V