She has much better things to think
of.
At this point some one will shriek: "But surely, even for marriage,
isn't it right that a girl should have a college education?" To which
I hasten to answer: most assuredly. I freely admit that a girl who
knows algebra, or once knew it, is a far more charming companion and
a nobler wife and mother than a girl who doesn't know x from y. But
the point is this: Does the higher education that fits a man to be a
lawyer also fit a person to be a wife and mother? Or, in other
words, is a lawyer a wife and mother? I say he is not. Granted that
a girl is to spend four years in time and four thousand dollars in
money in going to college, why train her for a career that she is
never going to adopt? Why not give her an education that will have a
meaning and a harmony with the real life that she is to follow?
For example, suppose that during her four years every girl lucky
enough to get a higher education spent at least six months of it
in the training and discipline of a hospital as a nurse. There is
more education and character making in that than in a whole bucketful
of algebra.
But no, the woman insists on snatching her share of an education
designed by Erasmus or William of Wykeham or William of Occam for
the creation of scholars and lawyers; and when later on in her home
there is a sudden sickness or accident, and the life or death of
those nearest to her hangs upon skill and knowledge and a trained
fortitude in emergency, she must needs send in all haste for a
hired woman to fill the place that she herself has never learned
to occupy.
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