Huntsville gazette., 1892-07-09
IN lVOMAN'S BEHALF.
OUR COMING WOMEN.
What They VIII Ee Like and How We
should Accept Them.

hOuld Accept Them.
At the commencement of the Chicago
Girls Higher school, the senior princi-
pal, Miss Rebecca $. Rice, A. NJ, says
the Chicago Herald, took a rather new
and more practical view of the new
woman's duties with her new oppor-
tunities Miss Rice said in part:
On occasions like these it used to be
the custom to talk of the school days as
being over. Happily for the world,
happily for women as women, happily
for you and for those to whom You will
give, and from whom you will receive
loving service in the years yet distant,
this is no longer the case. To-day is,
indeed, only commencement day for
you, for believe everyone of you in
tends to go on with some regular study,
and some of you are we'll on your way
toward that study. Four of you have
borne college examinations and favor
able reports are coming in from those
examinations. In the eases of three of
you these examinations have been as
severe as any given in the country. In
entering upon your college work you
will know that you have a right
sturdily won, to the best lnstruc-
ton the country affords. You are
ready for it. / hope more of your class
mates and many more of our school
mates will follow your example. Seek
the highest opportunity, and then do
not be satisfied without the most per-
feet attainment.
hn 1uc{ chn
great advance has come in the oppor-
tunities given to woman, and the de-
nands made of her in duties have kept
pace with her opportunities. Those
who looked to see her fail in meeting
the expectation of her advocates are
surprised to see the buoyant energy
with which she rises to every emer-
gency. 1t is as though new food of
vitality had been poured into her heart
and life Business men recognize with
surprise the business capacity of the
woman who, little while ago, seemed
only the petted idol of society. ''She
considereth field and buyeth it; with
the fruit of her hands she planteth
vineyard. She pcrceiveth that her
merchandise is good.
Here and there she is finding her way
into q chair in some high institution of
learning ''She openeth her mouth with
WISDOM She not only ''stretcheth
out her hand to feed the poor" but men
are learning everywhere that she is a
safe counsellor and fruitful origina-
tor in the broad philanthropies that
never so much occupied the world be-
fore. ''In her tongue is the law of
kindness"
VIII the women of the coming gen.
Grafton be like the women of genera
tion ago? Fathers and mothers, send
ing away their daughters for long
course of university study, ask this
question anxiously, for there has been
a great deal that was lovable and beau
tiful in the old-fashioned American
women. We shall not want to miss
virtue nor grace in the new
generation. We shall not want
the eyes dim and absent from por-
ing over books that should be bright
with home-love; nor the mind on visit
to the stars when it should be shedding
its own light upon household. But,
friends, the coming woman, if you send
her to college and do all you can to let
her find out what she was made for,
will not be quite what the passing wom--
IN is do not think you will like her
less She will be freer. You may have
to adjust yourselves little to accom-
modate her. l do not think it would
be quite fair of you to expect, when she
comes from college with honors equal
to those of your sons, and, besides
these with new ideas to which you
have not chanced to give attention, all
the adjustment to come from her side
If she is true she will come back to you
worthier than when she went away:
but you will find it wise to give the
newly awakened abilities room to grow
and bloom. You may find her more
worthy, even in the old way of love,
than ever before.
She will want ''to do something"
AS said before, she will feel it duty
to do something, l hope. Make room
for her and welcome her efforts. She
will not do her work like man. She
will arrive at her ends in different
way, which will probably be quite as
good. Expect it, and she will add new
elements to thought, new meanings to
research, new powers to the expression
of art, as she has already added new
wisdom to the administration of the
large philanthropics to which you have
SO fully admitted her.
Do not be afraid of the future of our
women if you educate them. A woman
crammed with knowledge only is as
much a monster as a man under the
same circumstances. Such monsters
are made easily; it does not take much
knowledge. Education presupposes
digestion of neutrality-suspicious. made
from it-a growth and exaltation OF the
! best powers by it. AS, all other things
being equal, the educated man is more
man than the uneducated, his natural
abilities having been thereby devel-
oped, so, by parity of reasoning, the
educated woman, all other things be-
ing equal, ought to be more of woman
than the uneducated, her natural abil-
tiles being thereby developed. So far
the experiment of wider scholarship
for men and women has seemed only to