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[232]

XLVI. the fear of its being wasted.

It is a curious whim this, which returns every now and then, that the higher education of women should be discouraged because “in case of marriage it will all be wasted.” It is one of the bugbears which Mary Wollstonecraft thought she had demolished, and Margaret Fuller after her; but it bears a great deal of killing. Those who still bring it up show how little importance they really attack to those functions of marriage and parentage about which they are continually talking. If they really rated these duties so high, they would see that no amount of intellectual development could be wasted in preparing for them.

The statistics of about seven hundred collegiate alumnae, as tabulated by the Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics, showed that about a quarter of the number were already married; and as their average age was then but twenty-eight, it could be well assumed that the percentage of wedlock would yet be largely increased. There is nothing in the reports to show that any of these wives felt that their education had

Harper and Brothers, Franklin Square, New York. 1888.

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