The Savannah morning news., 1904-08-14
WORLD

: sycophantic women who cling on fran
tically to the outer edge of society by
their teeth.
Because. however think it is gener-
ally a mistake to send a girl away from
home to school unless there Is some
particular reason. or she has manifest
ed unequivocaI ear marks of genius,
let nobody say I oppose the higher ed
ucation of women. I don't 1 believe
in il. do not think a girl can get too
much knowledge, or be given an edu-
cation that is too broad, and too deep,
ana too comprehensive, but do think
it is time to use little common sense
in the matter. I am tired of seeing
swell-headed girls come home to pat
ronize their fathers. who bring nothing
back with them in exchange for the
thousands of hard-earned dollars they
have cost but college yell, and their
college colors and a fiimsy pretense of
Bohemianism. I'm tired of seeing
mothers sew themselves to death to
I give girl an education that teaches
her to be nothing but dissatisfied,
and to yearn for the luXuries she can
never have.
The best education we can give any
girl is that which fits her to do her
part in life. When we talk about edu-
cation we mean it narrowly in the book
sense. Yet, the most forlOrn and help
less people on earth are those who
know nothing but books The most
highly educated woman / ever knew
was the most incompetent wife and
mother. She was a prodigy in mathe-
matics but she couldn't keep the
butcher bill within limits. She could
speak half a dozen different languages,
but she couldn't manage cook in any
one of them. She had a vast knowledge
of chemistry, but she never had a bit
of bread in her house that was fit to
eat. She knew all about the germ the
DRY, but she let baby die because she
didn't keep its bottle clean. Theoreti-
cally she was an ignoramus.
An educated man is one who has
knowledge that will enable him to earn
his living in some profession in which
muscle is subordinated to brain.
Woman's education has to be even more
complex, for, except in rare cases, she
does not choose a profession and bend
all of her energies to acquiring that.
girl is the unknown quantity in life,
and she must be educated not only to
meet her own requirements, but those
of her possible husband, but whatever
else she needs to know there is one
thing certain-she is going to need to
know the things that pertain espe-
cially 10 her own sex.
1t is the fashion to utterly ignore this
ana YET knowledge of how to keep
house, and how to sew are about the
most important that Maud can be
taught. It is because these things are
so seldom considered in the education
of girls that there are so many ignor-
rant, thriftless, incompetent wives
thrust on young men, and so many
wretched homes. and broken and dis
couraged men. AS long as a girl can
have the education in books furnished
by every town and hamlet. and the
magazines, and papers, and cheap
books of the day. and her mother can
teach her the profession of domesticity
nobody need grieve. as so many par
ents are doing, that they cannot give
their daughters the advantages of ed
ucation. The girl has got all she needs
and a trade to boot to fall back upon
II she needs to make her bread and
butter, for the market of the world is
over-supplied with lecturesses and au-
thoresses. and poetesses, but it is eter-
nally short on competent boarding
house keepers and good seamstresses.
Besides which there is no use in wor-
rying about the girl If she is a genius.
Genius makes its own way
Dorothy Dix