WHY GO TO COLLEGE? an Address

BY

ALICE FREEMAN PALMER

Formerly President of Wellesley College

To a largely increasing number of young girls college doors are openingevery year. Every year adds to the number of men who feel as a friendof mine, a successful lawyer in a great city, felt when in talking ofthe future of his four little children he said, "For the two boys it isnot so serious, but I lie down at night afraid to die and leave mydaughters only a bank account. " Year by year, too, the experiences oflife are teaching mothers that happiness does not necessarily come totheir daughters when accounts are large and banks are sound, but thaton the contrary they take grave risks when they trust everything toaccumulated wealth and the chance of a happy marriage. Our Americangirls themselves are becoming aware that they need the stimulus, thediscipline, the knowledge, the interests of the college in addition tothe school, if they are to prepare themselves for the most serviceablelives. 

But there are still parents who say, "There is no need that my daughtershould teach; then why should she go to college?" I will not replythat college training is a life insurance for a girl, a pledge that shepossesses the disciplined ability to earn a living for herself andothers in case of need, for I prefer to insist on the importance ofgiving every girl, no matter what her present circumstances, a specialtraining in some one thing by which she can render society service, notamateur but of an expert sort, and service too for which it will bewilling to pay a price. The number of families will surely increase whowill follow the example of an eminent banker whose daughters have beengiven each her specialty. One has chosen music, and has gone far withthe best masters in this country and in Europe, so far that she nowholds a high rank among musicians at home and abroad. Another hastaken art, and has not been content to paint pretty gifts for herfriends, but in the studios of New York, Munich, and Paris, she has wonthe right to be called an artist, and in her studio at home to paintportraits which have a market value. A third has proved that she canearn her living, if need be, by her exquisite jellies, preserves, andsweetmeats. Yet the house in the mountains, the house by the sea, andthe friends in the city are not neglected, nor are these young womenfound less attractive because of their special accomplishments. 

While it is not true that all girls should go to college any more thanthat all boys should go, it is nevertheless true that they should go ingreater numbers than at present. They fail to go because they, theirparents and their teachers, do not see clearly the personal benefitsdistinct from the commercial value of a college training. I wish hereto discuss these benefits, these larger gifts of the collegelife, --what they may be, and for whom they are waiting. 

It is undoubtedly true that many girls are totally unfitted by home andschool life for a valuable college course. These joys and successes, these high interests and friendships, are not for the self-consciousand nervous invalid, nor for her who in the exuberance of youthrecklessly ignores the laws of a healthy life. The good society ofscholars and of libraries and laboratories has no place and noattraction for her who finds no message in Plato, no beauty inmathematical order, and who never longs to know the meaning of thestars over her head or the flowers under her feet. Neither will thefiner opportunities of college life appeal to one who, until she iseighteen (is there such a girl in this country?), has felt no passionfor the service of others, no desire to know if through history orphilosophy, or any study of the laws of society, she can learn why theworld is so sad, so hard, so selfish as she finds it, even when shelooks upon it from the most sheltered life. No, the college cannot be, should not try to be, a substitute for the hospital, reformatory orkindergarten. To do its best work it should be organized for thestrong, not for the weak; for the high-minded, self-controlled, generous, and courageous spirits, not for the indifferent, the dull, the idle, or those who are already forming their characters on theamusement theory of life. All these perverted young people may, andoften do, get large benefit and invigoration, new ideals, and unselfishpurposes from their four years' companionship with teachers andcomrades of a higher physical, mental, and moral stature than theirown. I have seen girls change so much in college that I have wonderedif their friends at home would know them, --the voice, the carriage, theunconscious manner, all telling a story of new tastes and habits andloves and interests, that had wrought out in very truth a new creature. Yet in spite of this I have sometimes thought that in college more thanelsewhere the old law holds, "To him that hath shall be given and heshall have abundance, but from him who hath not shall be taken awayeven that which he seemeth to have. " For it is the young life which isopen and prepared to receive which obtains the gracious and upliftinginfluences of college days. What, then, for such persons are the richand abiding rewards of study in college or university?

Pre-eminently the college is a place of education. That is the groundof its being. We go to college to know, assured that knowledge issweet and powerful, that a good education emancipates the mind andmakes us citizens of the world. No college which does not thoroughlyeducate can be called good, no matter what else it does. No studentwho fails to get a little knowledge on many subjects, and muchknowledge on some, can be said to have succeeded, whatever otheradvantages she may have found by the way. It is a beautiful andsignificant fact that in all times the years of learning have been alsothe years of romance. Those who love girls and boys pray that ourcolleges may be homes of sound learning, for knowledge is the conditionof every college blessing. "Let no man incapable of mathematics enterhere, " Plato is reported to have inscribed over his Academy door. "Letno one to whom hard study is repulsive hope for anything from us, "American colleges might paraphrase. Accordingly in my talk today Ishall say little of the direct benefits of knowledge which the collegeaffords. These may be assumed. It is on their account that one knocksat the college door. But seeking this first, a good many other thingsare added. I want to point out some of these collateral advantages ofgoing to college, or rather to draw attention to some of the many formsin which the winning of knowledge presents itself. 

The first of these is happiness. Everybody wants "a good time, "especially every girl in her teens. A good time, it is true, does notalways in these years mean what it will mean by and by, any more thanthe girl of eighteen plays with the doll which entranced the child ofeight. It takes some time to discover that work is the best sort ofplay, and some people never discover it at all. But when mothers asksuch questions as these: "How can I make my daughter happy?" "How canI give her the best society?" "How can she have a good time?" theanswer in most cases is simple. Send her to college, --to almost anycollege. Send her because there is no other place where betweeneighteen and twenty-two she is so likely to have a genuinely good time. Merely for good times, for romance, for society, college life offersunequalled opportunities. Of course no idle person can possibly behappy, even for a day, nor she who makes a business of trying to amuseherself. For full happiness, though its springs are within, we wanthealth and friends and work and objects of aspiration. "We live byadmiration, hope, and love, " says Wordsworth. The college abounds inall three. In the college time new powers are sprouting, andintelligence, merriment, truthfulness and generosity are more naturalthan the opposite qualities often become in later years. Anexhilarating atmosphere pervades the place. We who are in it all thetime feel that we live at the fountain of perpetual youth, and thosewho take but a four years' bath in it become more cheerful, strong, andfull of promise than they are ever likely to find themselves again; fora college is a kind of compendium of the things that most men long for. It is usually planted in a beautiful spot, the charm of trees and waterbeing added to stately buildings and stimulating works of art. Venerable associations of the past hallow its halls. Leaders in thestirring world of to-day return at each commencement to share the freshlife of the new class. Books, pictures, music, collections, appliancesin every field, learned teachers, mirthful friends, athletics forholidays, the best words of the best men for holy days, --all are here. No wonder that men look back upon their college life as upon halcyondays, the romantic period of youth. No wonder that Dr. Holmes's poemsto his Harvard classmates find an echo in college reunions everywhere;and gray-haired men, who outside the narrowing circle of home have notheard their first names for years, remain Bill and Joe and John andGeorge to college comrades, even if unseen for more than a generation. 

Yet a girl should go to college not merely to obtain four happy yearsbut to make a second gain, which is often overlooked, and is littleunderstood even when perceived; I mean a gain in health. The old notionthat low vitality is a matter of course with women; that to be delicateis a mark of superior refinement, especially in well-to-do families;that sickness is a dispensation of Providence, --these notions meet withno acceptance in college. Years ago I saw in the mirror frame of acollege freshman's room this little formula: "Sickness iscarelessness, carelessness is selfishness, and selfishness is sin. "And I have often noticed among college girls an air of humiliation andshame when obliged to confess a lack of physical vigor, as if they wereconvicted of managing life with bad judgment, or of some moraldelinquency. With the spreading scientific conviction that health is amatter largely under each person's control, that even inheritedtendencies to disease need not be allowed to run their riotous courseunchecked, there comes an earnest purpose to be strong and free. Fascinating fields of knowledge are waiting to be explored;possibilities of doing, as well as of knowing, are on every side; newand dear friendships enlarge and sweeten dreams of future study andwork, and the young student cannot afford quivering nerves or smalllungs or an aching head any more than bad taste, rough manners, or aweak will. Handicapped by inheritance or bad training, she finds theplan of college life itself her supporter and friend. The steady, long-continued routine of mental work, physical exercise, recreation, and sleep, the simple and wholesome food, in place of irregular andunstudied diet, work out salvation for her. Instead of being left togo out-of-doors when she feels like it, the regular training of thegymnasium, the boats on lake and river, the tennis court, the golflinks, the basket ball, the bicycle, the long walk among the woods insearch of botanical or geological specimens, --all these and many morecall to the busy student, until she realizes that they have theirrightful place in every well-ordered day of every month. So shelearns, little by little, that buoyant health is a precious possessionto be won and kept. 

It is significant that already statistical investigation in thiscountry and in England shows that the standard of health is higheramong the women who hold college degrees than among any other equalnumber of the same age and class. And it is interesting also toobserve to what sort of questions our recent girl graduates have beeninclined to devote attention. They have been largely the neglectedproblems of little children and their health, of home sanitation, offood and its choice and preparation, of domestic service, of thecleanliness of schools and public buildings. Colleges for girls arepledged by their very constitution to make persistent war on the watercure, the nervine retreat, the insane asylum, the hospital, --thosebitter fruits of the emotional lives of thousands of women. "I cannever afford a sick headache again, life is so interesting and there isso much to do, " a delicate girl said to me at the end of her firstcollege year. And while her mother was in a far-off invalid retreat, she undertook the battle against fate with the same intelligence andcourage which she put into her calculus problems and her translationsof Sophocles. Her beautiful home and her rosy and happy children provethe measure of her hard-won success. Formerly the majority ofphysicians had but one question for the mother of the nervous anddelicate girl, "Does she go to school?" And only one prescription, "Take her out of school. " Never a suggestion as to suppers of picklesand pound-cake, never a hint about midnight dancing and hurriedday-time ways. But now the sensible doctor asks, "What are herinterests? What are her tastes? What are her habits?" And he findsnew interests for her, and urges the formation of out-of-door tastesand steady occupation for the mind, in order to draw the morbid girlfrom herself into the invigorating world outside. This the collegedoes largely through its third gift of friendship. 

Until a girl goes away from home to school or college, her friends arechiefly chosen for her by circumstances. Her young relatives, herneighbors in the same street, those who happen to go to the same schoolor church, --these she makes her girlish intimates. She goes to collegewith the entire conviction, half unknown to herself, that her father'spolitical party contains all the honest men, her mother's social circleall the true ladies, her church all the real saints of the community. And the smaller the town, the more absolute is her belief. But incollege she finds that the girl who earned her scholarship in thevillage school sits beside the banker's daughter; the New Englandfarmer's child rooms next the heiress of a Hawaiian sugar plantation;the daughters of the opposing candidates in a sharply fought electionhave grown great friends in college boats and laboratories; and beforeher diploma is won she realizes how much richer a world she lives inthan she ever dreamed of at home. The wealth that lies in differenceshas dawned upon her vision. It is only when the rich and poor sit downtogether that either can understand how the Lord is the Maker of themall. 

To-day above all things we need the influence of men and women offriendliness, of generous nature, of hospitality to new ideas, inshort, of social imagination. But instead, we find each politicalparty bitterly calling the other dishonest, each class suspicious ofthe intentions of the other, and in social life the pettiest standardsof conduct. Is it not well for us that the colleges all over thecountry still offer to their fortunate students a society of the mostdemocratic sort, --one in which a father's money, a mother's socialposition, can assure no distinction and make no close friends? Herecapacity of every kind counts for its full value. Here enthusiasmwaits to make heroes of those who can lead. Here charming manners, noble character, amiable temper, scholarly power, find their fullopportunity and inspire such friendships as are seldom made afterward. I have forgotten my chemistry, and my classical philology cannot bearexamination; but all round the world there are men and women at work, my intimates of college days, who have made the wide earth a friendlyplace to me. Of every creed, of every party, in far-away places and innear, the thought of them makes me more courageous in duty and morefaithful to opportunity, though for many years we may not have had timeto write each other a letter. The basis of all valuable and enduringfriendships is not accident or juxtaposition, but tastes, interests, habits, work, ambitions. It is for this reason that to collegefriendship clings a romance entirely its own. One of the friends mayspend her days in the laboratory, eagerly chasing the shy facts thathide beyond the microscope's fine vision, and the other may fill herhours and her heart with the poets and the philosophers; one maysteadfastly pursue her way toward the command of a hospital, and theother towards the world of letters and of art; these divergencesconstitute no barrier, but rather an aid to the fulness of friendship. And the fact that one goes in a simple gown which she has earned andmade herself, and the other lives when at home in a merchant's modernpalace--what has that to do with the things the girls care about andthe dreams they talk over in the walk by the river or the bicycle ridethrough country roads? If any young man to-day goes through Harvardlonely, neglected, unfriended, if any girl lives solitary and wretchedin her life at Wellesley, it is their own fault. It must be becausethey are suspicious, unfriendly or disagreeable themselves. Certainlyit is true that in the associations of college life, more than in anyother that the country can show, what is extraneous, artificial, andtemporary falls away, and the every-day relations of life and work takeon a character that is simple, natural, genuine. And so it comes aboutthat the fourth gift of college life is ideals of personal character. 

To some people the shaping ideals of what character should be, oftenheld unconsciously, come from the books they are given by the personswhom they most admire before they are twenty years old. The greatestthing any friend or teacher, either in school or college, can do for astudent is to furnish him with a personal ideal. The collegeprofessors who transformed me through my acquaintance with them--ah, they were few, and I am sure I did not have a dozen conversations withthem outside their class rooms--gave me, each in his different way, anideal of character, of conduct, of the scholar, the leader, of whichthey and I were totally unconscious at the time. For many years I haveknown that my study with them, no matter whether of philosophy or ofGreek, of mathematics or history or English, enlarged my notions oflife, uplifted my standards of culture, and so inspired me with newpossibilities of usefulness and of happiness. Not the facts andtheories that I learned so much as the men who taught me, gave thisinspiration. The community at large is right in saying that it wantsthe personal influence of professors on students, but it is whollywrong in assuming that this precious influence comes from frequentmeetings or talks on miscellaneous subjects. There is quite as likelyto be a quickening force in the somewhat remote and mysterious power ofthe teacher who devotes himself to amassing treasures of scholarship, or to patiently working out the best methods of teaching; who standingsomewhat apart, still remains an ideal of the Christian scholar, thejust, the courteous man or woman. To come under the influence of onesuch teacher is enough to make college life worthwhile. A young manwho came to Harvard with eighty cents in his pocket, and worked his waythrough, never a high scholar, and now in a business which looks verycommonplace, told me the other day that he would not care to be aliveif he had not gone to college. His face flushed as he explained howdifferent his days would have been if he had not known two of hisprofessors. "Do you use your college studies in your business?" Iasked. "Oh, no!" he answered. "But I am another man in doing thebusiness; and when the day's work is done I live another life becauseof my college experiences. The business and I are both the better forit every day. " How many a young girl has had her whole horizonextended by the changed ideals she gained in college! Yet this islargely because the associations and studies there are likely to giveher permanent interests--the fifth and perhaps the greatest gift ofcollege life of which I shall speak. 

The old fairy story which charmed us in childhood ended with--"And theywere married and lived happy ever after. " It conducted to the altar, having brought the happy pair through innumerable difficulties, andleft us with the contented sense that all the mistakes and problemswould now vanish and life be one long day of unclouded bliss. I haveseen devoted and intelligent mothers arrange their young daughters'education and companionships precisely on this basis. They planned asif these pretty and charming girls were going to live only twenty ortwenty-five years at the utmost, and had consequently no need of thewealthy interests that should round out the full-grown woman's stature, making her younger in feeling at forty than at twenty, and more lovelyand admired at eighty than at either. 

Emerson in writing of beauty declares that "the secret of uglinessconsists not in irregular outline, but in being uninteresting. We loveany forms, however ugly, from which great qualities shine. If command, eloquence, art, or invention exists in the most deformed person, allthe accidents that usually displease, please, and raise esteem andwonder higher. Beauty without grace is the head without the body. Beauty without expression tires. " Of course such considerations canhardly come with full force to the young girl herself, who feels agedat eighteen, and imagines that the troubles and problems of life andthought are hers already. "Oh, tell me to-night, " cried a collegefreshman once to her President, "which is the right side and which isthe wrong side of this Andover question about eschatology?" The younggirl is impatient of open questions, and irritated at her inability toanswer them. Neither can she believe that the first headlong zest withwhich she throws herself into society, athletics, into everything whichcomes in her way, can ever fail. But her elders know, looking on, thatour American girl, the comrade of her parents and of her brothers andtheir friends, brought up from babyhood in the eager talk of politicsand society, of religious belief, of public action, of socialresponsibility--that this typical girl, with her quick sympathies, herclear head, her warm heart, her outreaching hands, will not permanentlybe satisfied or self-respecting, though she have the prettiest dressesand hats in town, or the most charming of dinners, dances, and teas. Unless there comes to her, and comes early, the one chief happiness oflife, --a marriage of comradeship, --she must face for herself thequestion, "What shall I do with my life?"

I recall a superb girl of twenty as I overtook her one winter morninghurrying along Commonwealth Avenue. She spoke of a brilliant party ata friend's the previous evening. "But, oh!" she cried, throwing up herhands in a kind of hopeless impatience, "tell me what to do. Mydancing days are over!" I laughed at her, "Have you sprained yourankle?" But I saw I had made a mistake when she added, "It is nolaughing matter. I have been out three years. I have not done whatthey expected of me, " with a flush and a shrug, "and there is a crowdof nice girls coming on this winter; and anyway, I am so tired of goingto teas and ball-games and assemblies! I don't care the least in theworld for foreign missions, and, " with a stamp, "I am not goingslumming among the Italians. I have too much respect for the Italians. And what shall I do with the rest of my life?" That was a frankstatement of what any girl of brains or conscience feels, with more orless bitter distinctness, unless she marries early, or has somepressing work for which she is well trained. 

Yet even if that which is the profession of woman par excellence behers, how can she be perennially so interesting a companion to herhusband and children as if she had keen personal tastes, long her own, and growing with her growth? Indeed, in that respect the condition ofmen is almost the same as that of women. It would be quite the samewere it not for the fact that a man's business or profession isgenerally in itself a means of growth, of education, of dignity. Heleans his life against it. He builds his home in the shadow of it. Itbinds his days together in a kind of natural piety and makes himadvance in strength and nobility as he "fulfils the common round, thedaily task. " And that is the reason why men in the past, if they havebeen honorable men, have grown old better than women. Men usuallyretain their ability longer, their mental alertness and hospitality. They add fine quality to fine quality, passing from strength tostrength and preserving in old age whatever has been best in youth. Itwas a sudden recognition of this fact which made a young friend of minesay last winter, "I am not going to parties any more; the men bestworth talking with are too old to dance. "

Even with the help of a permanent business or profession, however, themost interesting men I know are those who have an avocation as well asa vocation. I mean a taste or work quite apart from the business oflife. This revives, inspires, and cultivates them perpetually. Itmatters little what it is, if only it is real and personal, is largeenough to last, and possesses the power of growth. A young sea-captainfrom a New England village on a long and lonely voyage falls upon acopy of Shelley. Appeal is made to his fine but untrained mind, andthe book of the boy poet becomes the seaman's university. The wideworld of poetry and of the other fine arts is opened, and theShelleyian specialist becomes a cultivated, original, and charming man. A busy merchant loves flowers, and in all his free hours studies them. Each new spring adds knowledge to his knowledge, and his friendscontinually bring him their strange discoveries. With growing wealthhe cultivates rare and beautiful plants, and shares them with hisfortunate acquaintances. Happy the companion invited to a walk or adrive with such observant eyes, such vivid talk! Because of thischeerful interest in flowers, and this ingenious skill in dealing withthem, the man himself is interesting. All his powers are alert, andhis judgment is valued in public life and in private business. Or isit more exact to say that because he is the kind of man who wouldinsist upon having such interests outside his daily work, he is stillfresh and young and capable of growth at an age when many other men aredull and old and certain that the time of decay is at hand?

There are two reasons why women need to cultivate these large andabiding interests even more persistently than men. In the first place, they have more leisure. They are indeed the only leisure class in thecountry, the only large body of persons who are not called upon to wintheir daily bread in direct wage-earning ways. As yet, fortunately, few men among us have so little self-respect as to idle about ourstreets and drawing-rooms because their fathers are rich enough tosupport them. We are not without our unemployed poor; but rovingtramps and idle clubmen are after all not of large consequence. Ourserious, non-producing classes are chiefly women. It is the regularambition of the chivalrous American to make all the women who depend onhim so comfortable that they need do nothing for themselves. Machineryhas taken nearly all the former occupations of women out of the homeinto the shop and factory. Widespread wealth and comfort, and theinherited theory that it is not well for the woman to earn money solong as father or brothers can support her, have brought about acondition of things in which there is social danger, unless with thelarger leisure are given high and enduring interests. To healthespecially there is great danger, for nothing breaks down a woman'shealth like idleness and its resulting ennui. More people, I am sure, are broken down nervously because they are bored, than because they areoverworked; and more still go to pieces through fussiness, unwholesomeliving, worry over petty details, and the daily disappointments whichresult from small and superficial training. And then, besides thedanger to health, there is the danger to character. I need not dwellon the undermining influence which men also feel when occupation istaken away and no absorbing private interest fills the vacancy. Thevices of luxurious city life are perhaps hardly more destructive tocharacter than is the slow deterioration of barren country life. Though the conditions in the two cases are exactly opposite, thetrouble is often the same, --absence of noble interests. In the cityrestless idleness organizes amusement; in the country deadly dulnesssucceeds daily toil. 

But there is a second reason why a girl should acquire for herselfstrong and worthy interests. The regular occupations of women in theirhomes are generally disconnected and of little educational value, atleast as those homes are at present conducted. Given the best will inthe world, the daily doing of household details becomes a wearisomemonotony if the mere performance of them is all. To make drudgerydivine a woman must have a brain to plan and eyes to see how to "sweepa room as to God's laws. " Imagination and knowledge should be thehourly companions of her who would make a fine art of each detail inkitchen and nursery. Too long has the pin been the appropriate symbolof the average woman's life--the pin, which only temporarily holdstogether things which may or may not have any organic connection withone another. While undoubtedly most women must spend the larger partof life in this modest pin-work, holding together the little things ofhome and school and society and church, it is also true, that cohesivework itself cannot be done well, even in humble circumstances, exceptby the refined, the trained, the growing woman. The smallest village, the plainest home, give ample space for the resources of the trainedcollege woman. And the reason why such homes and such villages are sooften barren of grace and variety is just because these fine qualitieshave not ruled them. The higher graces of civilization halt among us;dainty and finished ways of living give place to common ways, whilevulgar tastes, slatternly habits, clouds and despondency reign in thehouse. Little children under five years of age die in needlessthousands because of the dull, unimaginative women on whom they depend. Such women have been satisfied with just getting along, instead ofpacking everything they do with brains, instead of studying the bestpossible way of doing everything small or large; for there is always abest way, whether of setting a table, of trimming a hat, or teaching achild to read. And this taste for perfection can be cultivated;indeed, it must be cultivated, if our standards of living are to beraised. There is now scientific knowledge enough, there is moneyenough, to prevent the vast majority of the evils which afflict oursocial organism, if mere knowledge or wealth could avail; but thegreater difficulty is to make intelligence, character, good taste, unselfishness prevail. 

What, then, are the interests which powerfully appeal to mind andheart, and so are fitted to become the strengthening companions of awoman's life? I shall mention only three, all of them such as areelaborately fostered by college life. The first is the love of greatliterature. I do not mean that use of books by which a man may getwhat is called a good education and so be better qualified for thebattle of life, nor do I mention books in their character as reservoirsof knowledge, books which we need for special purposes, and which areno longer of consequence when our purpose with them is served. I havein mind the great books, especially the great poets, books to beadopted as a resource and a solace. The chief reason why so manypeople do not know how to make comrades of such books is because theyhave come to them too late. We have in this country enormous numbersof readers, probably a larger number who read, and who read many hoursin the week, than has ever been known elsewhere in the world. But whatdo these millions read besides the newspapers? Possibly adenominational religious weekly and another journal of fashion orbusiness. Then come the thousands who read the best magazines, andwhatever else is for the moment popular in novels and poetry--the lastdialect story, the fashionable poem, the questionable but talked-ofnovel. Let a violent attack be made on the decency of a new story andinstantly, if only it is clever, its author becomes famous. 

But the fashions in reading of a restless race--the women too idle, themen too heavily worked--I will not discuss here. Let light literaturebe devourered by our populace as his drug is taken by the opium-eater, and with a similar narcotic effect. We can only seek out the children, and hope by giving them from babyhood bits of the noblest literature, to prepare them for the great opportunities of mature life. I urge, therefore, reading as a mental stimulus, as a solace in trouble, aperpetual source of delight; and I would point out that we must notdelay to make the great friendships that await us on the libraryshelves until sickness shuts the door on the outer world, or deathenters the home and silences the voices that once helped to make thesefriendships sweet. If Homer and Shakespeare and Wordsworth andBrowning are to have meaning for us when we need them most, it will bebecause they come to us as old familiar friends whose influences havepermeated the glad and busy days before. The last time I heard JamesRussell Lowell talk to college girls, he said, --for he was too ill tosay many words--"I have only this one message to leave with you. Inall your work in college never lose sight of the reason why you havecome here. It is not that you may get something by which to earn yourbread, but that every mouthful of bread may be the sweeter to yourtaste. "

And this is the power possessed by the mighty dead, --men of every timeand nation, whose voices death cannot silence, who are waiting even atthe poor man's elbow, whose illuminating words may be had for the priceof a day's work in the kitchen or the street, for lack of love of whommany a luxurious home is a dull and solitary spot, breeding misery andvice. Now the modern college is especially equipped to introduce itsstudents to such literature. The library is at last understood to bethe heart of the college. The modern librarian is not the keeper ofbooks, as was his predecessor, but the distributer of them, and theguide to their resources, proud when he increases the use of histreasures. Every language, ancient or modern, which contains aliterature is now taught in college. Its history is examined, itsphilology, its masterpieces, and more than ever is English literaturestudied and loved. There is now every opportunity for the collegestudent to become an expert in the use of his own tongue and pen. Whatother men painfully strive for he can enjoy to the full withcomparatively little effort. 

But there is a second invigorating interest to which college trainingintroduces its student. I mean the study of nature, intimacy with thestrange and beautiful world in which we live. "Nature never did betraythe heart that loved her, " sang her poet high priest. When the worldhas been too much with us, nothing else is so refreshing to tired eyesand mind as woods and water, and an intelligent knowledge of the lifewithin them. For a generation past there has been a well-nigh universalturning of the population toward the cities. In 1840 only nine percent of our people lived in cities of 8, 000 inhabitants or more. Nowmore than a third of us are found in cities. But the electric-car, thetelephone, the bicycle, still keep avenues to the country open. Certainit is that city people feel a growing hunger for the country, particularly when grass begins to grow. This is a healthy taste, andmust increase the general knowledge and love of nature. Fortunate arethe little children in those schools whose teachers know and love theworld in which they live. Their young eyes are early opened to thebeauty of birds and trees and plants. Not only should we expect ourgirls to have a feeling for the fine sunset or the wide-reachingpanorama of field and water, but to know something also about the lessobvious aspects of nature, its structure, its methods of work, and theendless diversity of its parts. No one can have read Matthew Arnold'sletters to his wife, his mother, and his sister, without being struckby the immense enjoyment he took throughout his singularly simple andhard-working life in flowers and trees and rivers. The English lakecountry had given him this happy inheritance, with everywhere its soundof running water and its wealth of greenery. There is a closeconnection between the marvellous unbroken line of English song, andthe passionate love of the Englishman for a home in the midst of birds, trees, and green fields. 

 "The world is so full of a number of things, That I think we should all be as happy as kings, "

is the opinion of everybody who knows nature as did Robert LouisStevenson. And so our college student may begin to know it. Let herenter the laboratories and investigate for herself. Let her make herdelicate experiments with the blowpipe or the balance; let her trackmysterious life from one hiding-place to another; let her "name all thebirds without a gun, " and make intimates of flower and fish andbutterfly--and she is dull indeed if breezy tastes do not follow herthrough life, and forbid any of her days to be empty of intelligentenjoyment. "Keep your years beautiful; make your own atmosphere, " wasthe parting advice of my college president, himself a livingillustration of what he said. 

But it is a short step from the love of the complex and engaging worldin which we live to the love of our comrades in it. Accordingly thethird precious interest to be cultivated by the college student is aninterest in people. The scholar today is not a being who dwells apartin his cloister, the monk's successor; he is a leader of the thoughtsand conduct of men. So the new subjects which stand beside theclassics and mathematics of medieval culture are history, economics, ethics, and sociology. Although these subjects are as yet merely inthe making, thousands of students are flocking to their investigation, and are going out to try their tentative knowledge in CollegeSettlements and City Missions and Children's Aid Societies. The bestinstincts of generous youth are becoming enlisted in these livingthemes. And why should our daughters remain aloof from the mostabsorbing work of modern city life, work quite as fascinating to youngwomen as to young men? During many years of listening to collegesermons and public lectures in Wellesley, I always noticed a quickenedattention in the audience whenever the discussion touched politics ortheology. These are, after all, the permanent and peremptoryinterests, and they should be given their full place in a healthy andvigorous life. 

But if that life includes a love of books, of nature, of people, itwill naturally turn to enlarged conceptions of religion--my sixth andlast gift of college life. In his first sermon as Master of BalliolCollege, Dr. Jowett spoke of the college, "First as a place ofeducation, secondly as a place of society, thirdly as a place ofreligion. " He observed that "men of very great ability often fail inlife because they are unable to play their part with effect. They areshy, awkward, self-conscious, deficient in manners, faults which are asruinous as vices. " The supreme end of college training, he said, "isusefulness in after life. " Similarly, when the city of Cambridgecelebrated in Harvard's Memorial Hall the life and death of the gallantyoung ex-governor of Massachusetts, William E. Russell, men did well tohang above his portrait some wise words he has lately said, "Neverforget the everlasting difference between making a living and making alife. " That he himself never forgot; and it was well to remind citizensand students of it, as they stood there facing too the ancient wordsall Harvard men face when they take their college degrees and go outinto the world, "They that be wise shall shine as the brightness of thefirmament, and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars forever and ever. " Good words these to go out from college with. Thegirls of Wellesley gather every morning at chapel to bow their headstogether for a moment before they scatter among the libraries andlecture-rooms and begin the experiments of the new day. And alwaystheir college motto meets the eyes that are raised to its penetratingmessage, "Not to be ministered unto, but to minister. " How many ayoung heart has loyally responded, "And to give life a ransom formany. " That is the "Wellesley spirit;" and the same sweet spirit ofdevout service has gone forth from all our college halls. In any ofthem one may catch the echo of Whittier's noble psalm, --

 "O Lord and Master of us all Whate'er our name or sign, We own Thy sway, we hear Thy call, We test our lives by Thine. "

That is the supreme test of life, --its consecrated serviceableness. TheMaster of Balliol was right; the brave men and women who founded ourschools and colleges were not wrong. "For Christ and the Church"universities were set up in the wilderness of New England; for thelarge service of the State they have been founded and maintained atpublic cost in every section of the country where men have settled, from the Alleghanies across the prairies and Rocky Mountains down tothe Golden Gate. Founded primarily as seats of learning, theirteachers have been not only scientists and linguists, philosophers andhistorians, but men and women of holy purposes, sound patriotism, courageous convictions, refined and noble tastes. Set as theseteachers have been upon a hill, their light has at no period of ourcountry's history been hid. They have formed a large factor in ourcivilization, and in their own beautiful characters have continuallyshown us how to combine religion and life, the ideal and practical, thehuman and the divine. 

Such are some of the larger influences to be had from college life. Itis true all the good gifts I have named may be secured without the aidof the college. We all know young men and women who have had nocollege training, who are as cultivated, rational, resourceful, andhappy as any people we know, who excel in every one of theseparticulars the college graduates about them. I believe they oftenbitterly regret the lack of a college education. And we see young menand women going through college deaf and blind to their great chancesthere, and afterwards curiously careless and wasteful of the bestthings in life. While all this is true, it is true too that to theopen-minded and ambitious boy or girl of moderate health, ability, self-control, and studiousness, a college course offers the mostattractive, easy, and probable way of securing happiness and health, good friends and high ideals, permanent interests of a noble kind, andlarge capacity for usefulness in the world. It has been well said thatthe ability to see great things large and little things small is thefinal test of education. The foes of life, especially of women'slives, are caprice, wearisome incapacity and petty judgments. Fromthese oppressive foes we long to escape to the rule of right reason, where all things are possible, and life becomes a glory instead of agrind. No college, with the best teachers and collections in theworld, can by its own power impart all this to any woman. But if onehas set her face in that direction, where else can she find so manyhands reached out to help, so many encouraging voices in the air, somany favoring influences filling the days and nights?