It was taken for granted that their brains were too
delicately poised to allow them to learn anything. It was presumed
that their minds were so exquisitely hung that intellectual effort
might disturb them. The present age has gone to the other extreme:
and this is seen nowhere more than in the crowding of women into
colleges originally designed for men. Oxford, I regret to find,
has not stood out against this change.
To a profound scholar like myself, the presence of these young women,
many of them most attractive, flittering up and down the streets of
Oxford in their caps and gowns, is very distressing.
Who is to blame for this and how they first got in I do not know.
But I understand that they first of all built a private college of
their own close to Oxford, and then edged themselves in foot by foot.
If this is so they only followed up the precedent of the recognised
method in use in America. When an American college is established,
the women go and build a college of their own overlooking the
grounds. Then they put on becoming caps and gowns and stand and look
over the fence at the college athletics. The male undergraduates, who
were originally and by nature a hardy lot, were not easily disturbed.
But inevitably some of the senior trustees fell in love with the
first year girls and became convinced that coeducation was a noble
cause. American statistics show that between 1880 and 1900 the number
of trustees and senior professors who married girl undergraduates or
who wanted to do so reached a percentage of,--I forget the exact
percentage; it was either a hundred or a little over.
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