The Indianapolis journal., 1883-06-16

always be English and prejhdiced. What
ever viVacity the bucolics of her classics may
offer, the fogs of London will cool her ardor
into str let propriety of thought and action
Education for girls in England will be-
come yet more liberal bnt il will never be-
come mania. Precedent is strong for
England Oscar Wilde must come to
America to plant extreme measures. And it
IS IN America that radical measures in
almost every innovation may be awaited.
WOMEN IN AMERICA.
The great nation with its noble heart
wants to give every man a chance. Like
self on the radical side, not because she wants
strikes, but because she loves freedom. The
United States have placed themselves on the
radical side of the woman question. 1t is
here that the question of education is put
absolutely on its own merits No creed, as
in France, overshadows with superstition
and links woman to the middle ages. No
social prejudice, as in England, confines
and restraints her. There is no public senti-
ment in this nineteenth century which
debars an American woman from develop
ing sher nature is designed to develop.
The French girl is superficial and roman
tic; the American girl is thorough and prac-
ticaL The English girl is stiff and prosaic,
the American girl is as free as a bird and
originality clothes all her ideas. The girls
across the sea live in mental
and moral jackets; the American
girl drinks in the pure air at full droughts
and fears not to call her soul her own. The
unrestrained life of American girls is grave
problem which Europeans cannot solve. do
not agree when they call our system too
radical.
Woman must first have the experience of
entire freedom. In her new life, when boys
and girls are educated together, when every
social barrier is down, when heterogeneous
mass of students stand in the same relations
with each other as the brother and sister of
the home, our system is surely put at its Sc
verest test You may, all of you, have ex-
amples before you that discourage the con-
tinuance of this system. A lady student
may be rude and boisterous-she may be in
dolent and superficial; but examine the
home training before you condemn the
body of lady students of which she is a mem
ber Where one by her super6ciality casts
reproach on her sex, a dozen others cover
their sisters with honor by ladyhood, earn
estness and intelligence. Granted that there
are even general abuses of the higher co-edu-
cational system, we know the theory is right.
The natural instincts of woman will final
ly rectify mistakes. l sometimes wonder,
myself, whether we are ready for this radical
change that has come over our lives. The
traditions of the past still cling to us, some
what 1 have remarked students, gentlemen
who among themselves argue on the merits
of Clay, on the influence of Hamilton; who
discuss chemical transformation and geolog-
ical strata, and an hour later, perhaps, have
seen these same gentlemen with young
ladies, their classmates, who really knew just
as much as they, and the talk Immediately
turned to fashion, or dancing, or pretty com.
II. -. a.. IL.
to the old idea that there is mental inequali.
ty between the sexes. In those walks to the
springs, the hills, the dip of the valley, the
wayside with It's crop of blossoms
the ferns, the fringe of the woodland pool
all gain fresh interest when science has
| taught Us how to interpret them. The two
whom you saw walking to the springs under
the same umbrella have recited, perhaps
that very morning in botany or geology
Both knew equally well the secrets of the
beauties about them, but nine cases out oi
ten If the wind bears the conversation to
you, they are talking about the awful ho
| weather or the jolly ice cream of the nigh
before. Now were it he and he, or she and
she instead of he and she under that um
brella, there would doubtless be a review ol
the mornings lesson, a classification oil
stones and analysis of blossoms. This state
of things is nothing but the old-time tradi
ton of woman's helplessness and mans cour
tesy toward the same. 1t is out of place with
the century. l believe that the American
gentleman will finally leave at home the
young lady whose talk is frivolous, and
choose that one who really makes his uni
versity education of value to him by Civ
ing an opportunity to use what he
has learned. l believe the Amer
ican young lady will finally refuse
the escort who, while talking sense to his
chums, pours out nonsense to her.
American womauhood means something
different to-day from what it did yesterday
Did you not see promise of what she may
become, by the woman who addressed us In
chapel exercises the other Friday morningi
Mrs. Wells, noble in bearing and language
Mrs. Willard, quiet and elegaot, whose
words were the purest English and whose
manners were of a real lady; Mrs. Wallace
the grandmother, whose arms she said, had
carried three generations. Did you remark the
enthusiasm of Mrs Wallace as she spoke OF
the future of American girls?
That Friday morning gave small example
of what the true American women are do
ing all over the United States They left theil
homes and families to fight for temperance
have no reason to believe other than that wher
they have won in the struggle against the
vile monster, they will return to their fire
sides as Cineinnatus to his plow
l have no reason to believe other than that
these women took the public field because
duty called them there. We saw earnest
women at our Horticultural Associa
ton recently. Their voices trembled
perhaps, and their papers shook in their
hands as they read an account of their stud
les in horticulture.
But these same women are preparing the
the way for yet braver and broader genera.
ton of women, who will read unabashed the
open book of nature l fancy the Apostle
Paul would be ashamed of his old prejudices
could he hear some OF the American women
of to day in their expostions of the Scrip.
lures. 1t was her charity that called forth
Paul's praises of the good Priscilla. / am in.
clined to think his admiration would be
boundless for the women of our churches to-
day, whose charity-equal to that of old-time
Priscilla-is governed by clear brain, fit to
hold council with the eloquent Apostle him
self.
do not ovarrata the woman nf to.dav 7