“You may remember that Perkins assured me not long ago, that marriage did not run in the Perkins female line,” said I.
“All the more reason, then, that his girls should be encouraged to equip themselves thoroughly in some direction or other, instead of waiting disconsolately to be chosen in marriage, keeping up their courage as the years slip away, with a few cold drops of Associated Charity. Of course the majority of us will continue to be wives and mothers--there is nothing equal to that when it is a success--but will not marriage become still more desirable if the choicest girls are educated to be the intellectual companions of men, and taught to familiarize themselves with the real conditions of life, instead of being limited to the rose garden of a harem, over the hedges of which they are expected only to peep at the busy world--the world of men, the world of action and toil and struggle and sin--the world into which their sons are graduated when cut loose from the maternal apron-strings? We intend to learn what to teach our sons, so that we may no longer be silenced with the plea that women do not know, and be put off with a secretive conjugal smile. And as for the girls who do not marry, the world is open to them--the world of art and song and charity and healing and brave endeavor in a hundred fields. Become just like men? Never. If there is one thing which the educated woman of the present is seeking to preserve and foster, it is the subtle delicacy of nature, it is the engaging charm of womanhood which distinguishes us from men. Who are the pupils at the colleges for women to-day? The dowdy, sexless, unattractive, masculine-minded beings who have served to typify for nine men out of ten the crowning joke of the age--the emancipation of women? No; but lovely, graceful, sympathetic, earnest, pure-minded girls in the flower of attractive maidenhood. And that is why the well-to-do American mother is asking herself whether she would be doing the best thing for her daughter if she were to encourage her to become merely a New-World, Old-World young lady of the ancient order of things. For centuries the women of civilization have worshipped chastity, suffering resignation and elegance as the ideals of femininity; now we mean to be intelligent besides, or at least as nearly so as possible.”