The news & observer. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1894-current, 1905-07-05

NEW O1K
In view of the fact that statistics
show that the college girl has about
rs per cent. less chance of marrying
than her sister woman-Who has by
no means a certainty-the college
girls ideal husband may be regarded
as almost as mythical a parsonage as
Sairy Camps Mrs. Harris Neverthe-
less, the students of the various insti-
tutions for the higher education OF
woman have been discussing this inter-
esting individual in the current num-
Der of Good Housekeeping, and telling
what they think a perfect husband
should be and should not be.
The result is somewhat surprising,
Summed up, the opinion of the college
girl is that the ideal husband is not
handsome, but has plenty of money,
and that preferably he is not a college
bred.
Passing over the first two quail
fications--for anyone can see at a
glance the advantages of a woman
having a husband whose looks do
not invite invidious comparisons with
her own and the convenience of being
united to man with a long pocket
book-the third specification for a
model husband, as seen from the
Vassar and Smith and Wellesley
standpoint, is amazing.
Does education unfit a man for
being a good husband? Does a col
lege training destroy a mans domes-
tic instincts? Does a knowledge of
the differential calculus make a man
more critical of his wife's cooking and
less indulgent to her mistakes on bar
gain days?
This opens up a brand new prob
lem.
We all know that the great objec-
ton that has been urged against the
higher education of woman is that it
untitled them TO be wives and mothers.
To be sure nobody has ever offered
a convincing reason why this was
true Considering that the welfare of
the whole human race lies, to a great
extent in the hands of women, it
would seem that it was impossible
for woman to know too much to be
q wife or mother.
1t would seem that she could not
know too much mathematics to en-
able her to run the affairs of the
home financially. That she could not
know too much science to enable her
to bring perfect children into the
world and to raise them healthily,
and that she could not know too much
of history to enable her to avoid the
mistakes from which others have suf-
feGed.
This, however, is not the general
view of the case. Public opinion, even
at this late day, holds that the higher
education units a woman for wife
hood and motherhood Men concur In
this opinion so far as 10 make a col
lege degree for a woman a matrimon-
ial handicap. Any little silly, giggling,
Anticipated debutante can marry six
times to a Vassar graduatess once.
The college girls NJ. A. seldom comes
to read ma.
Having fought their way to an
education against the idiotic assump-
ton that it untitled them to be wives
it is certainly astounding to hear the
college-bred woman declaring that a
college education units a man to be
a good husband.
The reasons that the college girl
assigns for finding the college man
undesirable to be a husband are that
he is too young, too used to living on
his fathers money; he has never had
to brush up against the rough edges
of the world. and has never been
tried, and what wOman's respect and
admiration is greater according to
what man has done in the world
than it is according to how many foot
ball games he has played, or how
many degrees he has taken The
students of the co-educational institu-
tons add to this indictment the
whitening testimony that going to
schooi with a man and seeing him
fail in his lessons has stripped college
men in their eyes of the halo of mas
culine superiority which must sur
round the men they marry.
All OF these are excellent reasons
for not marrying a college boy, but
there are a million reasons why no
woman of sense should marry any
boy, and they do not satisfactorily
explain why the college woman does
not consider the college man an ideal
husband.
On the face of it it looks as if
the highly educated woman would
find her natural affinity in the man
OF equal culture, with the same tastes
IN art and literature. The highest
conception of happiness that is posi-
bic is companionship with a kindred
mind and soul.
Much of the domestic infelicitv
and infidelity of the world is the
result or the fact that when the first
flush of romance has died out after
marriage and the woman has lost the
beauty that attracted the man, hus-
band and wife find that they have
nothlng IN common on which they
build an enduring comradeship. Wo-
out that they have mated with a clod.
and men who went wrong excused
themselves by saying that their wives
ala not understand their higher ma
ture. The possibility of solving this
problem has seemed to lie entirely in
intellectual congeniality, and so it is
distinct blow to the anti-divorce
league to find out that the college girl
is going to give the mitten to the col
lege man.
Nor is this the only reason for
thinking that the college girl makes
a mistake in assuming that the college
man makes bad husband. If edu-
cation means anything at all, it means
the quickening of the perceptions, the
cultivation of understanding and COM
prehenSion, and the broadening OF the
sympathy. These are the qualities
that count for most in husband. and
the men whose finer natures have
been cultivated will be tenderer and
more considerate husbands than the
men whose senSibilitieS have not only
been developed, but have been blunted
by constant contact with the world
A man who knows nothing Of music.
nothing of art, nothing of poetry, will
Nrah and