The western sentinel. [volume] (Winston-Salem, N.C.) 1887-1926, 1889-06-13
THE ANNUAL ADDRESS.
Delivered By Professor Charles Lee
Smith, Phi. ID.

Delivered by Professor Gharles Lee
Smith, Phi. ID.
Prof Charles Lee Smith. Phi. D.,
Fellow by Courtesy, Instructor in
History and Lecturer on Sociology in
Johns II, .pkins University, Baltimore,
delivered the following Annual Ad
dress, on Tuesday, June 4th:
Salem Female Academy; Ladies and Gen
Hemen:-
When in the midst and under the
pressure of University duties, President
Clewells fiattering invitation to address
you on this occasion was presented to me
by that progressive Carolinian, your Mr..
H. E. Fries, my first thought was, with
the limited time at my disposal for prep
aration, that in justice to you. it ought to
be declined. But when he told me it
was as a young man in sympathy with
the New South that was desired to be
present, felt should no longer hesi-
tate. That the oldest and one of the best
of Southern institutions for the higher
education of women should recognize
and thus emphasize its appreciation of
the changed conditions between the Old
South with its glorious past and the New
South with its honorable present and it's
promising future, is worthy of special
note. That such an institution should
invite one whose life dates from the
struggle which divides the two epochs
to take part in its Commencement exer-
cises is, take it, more than a personal
compliment. Still other considerations
influenced my coming: | appreciate the
privilege of speaking to so many young
1 l-1 ~ ,fa%,
of the South and can only hope some
idea may be developed which will prove
the seed thought for some fruitful life.
From what has already been said, you
have doubtless OWNED my subject:
| Women and Education-a study of the
South under changed conditions.
| Young ladies, as the key note to what
l shall say, let me quote sentence from
a celebrated French writer which Iwould
fain have you remember. 1t is this
"You hold the sceptre; in your souls,
much more than in the laws of legisla-
tors, now repose the futurity of the world
and the destinies of the human race"
More than four centuries before Christ,
| Plato said, "no one will deny that
/ women ought to share in education and
in other ways with men," but from that
| time till the beginning of this century
| tQ0r0 nave O0Su Out lew philosophers W
advocate so liberal view of woman's
sphere. just here can not refrain from
borrowing an illustration from that able
and earnest defender of woman, Mr.. T.
w. Higginson, In Broad Street, St
Giles, London said he, "there is or was
sign inscribed The Good Woman with
the painting of woman without a head .
1t seems a simple and rudimentary joke
enough, but it condenses in few square
feet Of space the opinions of many of the
greatest men. When Lessing said, The
woman who thinks is like the man who
puts on rouge-ridiculous;' when Voltaire
said, Ideas are like beards-womena and
very young men have none;" when
Niebuhr thought he should not have
educated girl well for he should have
her know too much; these eminent mer
simply painted, each in his own way, the
sign of the good woman. Dean Swift
perhaps, carried the argument steI
further when in describing a certain
casualty he summed it up: " So many