The Roanoke times. [volume] (Roanoke, Va.) 1890-1895, 1893-09-06

'CoulDlneu gifts or MT. and Mrs. Durant.
Here is total of s., 1928, O7S.1S, mu-
nificent sum, and larger by many thou
sands than the total gifts made to all
the colleges i'll some of the older states.
Harvard university received more than
half of this amount, and yet that insti-
tuition has only recently admitted young
women to its courses and even now does
not give them the same advantages as
young men. To President Eliots request
that women contribute 100000 to en-
dow the woman's annex of Harvard uni
versity it might be pertinent to ask why
it would not be right to use for this pur-
pose part of the $1,2O0,00O given by
women i'll past years to the funds of the
university. The scholarships, the botanic
garden, the divinity school, the library
and the departments that have been en-
riched by this bounty of women show
how well they can discriminate in their
gifts.
This does not include all, however.
that women have done for education in
Massachusetts. Public libraries have re-
ceived gifts amounting to 1851 1876, and
public and industrial schools have been
given 1922, 900. Another way in which
education has been aided by women is
by gifts to the free kindergartens, which
have received $344, $40. Even this does
not cover all the money women have
given to aid others in getting an educa-
ton, many being too modest to allow the
amount of their gifts to be known, but
it is enough to show how strong an inter
est women have taken in colleges and
education This interest is not of recent
origin either. AS early as 1864 Bridget
Wynds gave Harvard college "a, and in
1T1S Mime. Hutchinson gave the same in
stitution G10 These sums look small
beside the recent requests to Harvard of
1920 900 by Mrs. Elizabeth Fogg and
S1G0,925 by Mrs. Ellen Quincy. But it
is the spirit and the ability and not the
size of the donation that measure the
value of the gift.
1t is II long call from the earliest of
these expressions of woman's interest in
education to the present time, when COL
leSes are opening their doors to female
students and placing them on the same
level with male students. All have not
done this, but some have, and others will
be compelled to follow. The results of
college training for women have more
than justified the efforts made and swept
away most of the prejudice that once ex-
listed against the higher intellectual
training of women. The New York Sun
not long ago gave the following illustra-
ton of what a college bred woman can
do. 1t said: "Ono college woman in
New York, wife of a busy physician,
does all her husbands reading for him
both of current literature and medical
publications. With the trained intelh-
gence peculiar to the thoroughly educat-
ed woman she grasps the salient points
OF the articles, and in q few words gives
them to him at dinner or in the after
noon drive"
With such proof of how a college bred
woman can enter into an intelligent part
nership with her husband and the proofs
given in the exhibit at Chicago of the lib
erality of women toward colleges there
will be general agreement that the day
has passed when the demand for equal
facilities for the higher education of wo-
men can be brushed aside as unworthy of
Observation-Disclosures Press.