The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1909-05-08

UMMER is coming, when the
voice of the graduate will be
heard in our land. There will
be no escaping it. The graduate
csls...Ot keep from being wise, nor can he
Cor she) refrain from giving wisdom
to the foolish world that needs it so
much. The rest of US ought to be
thankful and would be no doubt If
some of US had not been graduates
ourselves and afterward recovered
from it. Yet is the graduate thing
Of glory, especially if from a woman's
college. The world has nothing else
quite 50 radiant She makes all the
rest of us look drab colored and unin-
teresting. She is the queen rose of
the rosebud garden of girls" I sup
pose nobody ever wrote about girl
graduates without ringing in that line.
mother rhetorical standby in describ-
ing graduations-if feminine-is a ref
erence to peaches and cream" 1t Is
the obvious thing to say and approved
by long usage. Yet is it hackneyed,
stale. platttudinous commonplace, trite
and altogether too ancient to fit so
original and refreshing a creature as
the newly fiedged A. B. from a wo-
mans college. She is so deliciously
new that she needs a new term to
describe her.
Sweet girl graduates have been
written about so long and so effusively
that all the candy adjectives have been
used up. There is no longer anything
to be said that has not been said All
times before. 1t is a theme that
arouses boundless enthusiasm, es-
pecially if man is doing the writing
To hear a sweet voice tripping1y read
off an essay about comic sections.
Greek roots, the cumulative theory of
money and the influence of paganism
on early Christianity is so inspiring
that It has mere male reporters turn
ing out saccharine sentences like a
sugar factory. The diplodocus, the
carboniferous age and the atomic the
DRY were never so charming as when
expounded through a rosebud mouth
set off with a dimple. 1t is enough to
make man want to study the history
of the eighteenth dynasty in Egypt,
the Aryan migration and the law of
natural selection, if only to keep in
sight intellectually of the girl no
longer left behind him." but now
away on ahead. Since woman. lovely
woman. has taken to studying she may
make scholars of us all.
The good old reliable, never neg
lected, always on duty description of
the girl graduate is that which calls
her "the sweetest flower that blooms
in June" That sounds as if it were
invented by Chauncey NJ. Depew, but
probably antedates even Depew. Any
way, it is old enough to be pensioned
and retired on half pay, but it never
will be for the very good reason that
whenever a man thinks of the crop of
loneliness turned out by the woman's
ao1laOpG aaHh ar1c ont low he
begins talking of flowers as inevitably
as the sparks fly upward All of
which is probably sickening enough to
the graduates in question, for they are
or should be, very superior young per-
sons who have passed the peaches and
cream stage and think only of log
arithms, wisdom and the higher life
that is, on commencement day. OF
course Afterward most of them get
married and descend to thinking OF
husbands, children. pink teas and mil
linery like the rest of womankind. II
the truth We're known they probably
think of these things and talk of them
most of the time even in college, but
publish it not in Zion.
There are over a hundred institu-
lions in this country that aspire to be
called woman's colleges, and some Of
them are worthy of the name. Among
the most prominent of those that are
exclusively for women are Vassar
overlooking the Hudson river a
Poughkeepsie, N. Y; Bryn Mawr. II
the suburbs of Philadelphia, where
President Tafts daughter is a student
Radcliffe, which is the woman's sec.
ton OF Harvard; Barnard. which hold.
the same relation to Columbia; tn,
Woman's College of Baltimore, which
while not a part of Johns Hopkins. Il
yet influenced by that institution
Smith college, located at Northampton
Mass; Mount Holyoke, situated a
South Hadley. Mass. and Wellesley oil
the banks of Lake Waban. in the en-
virons of Boston. In addition to thes
are the co-educational mems colleges
including practically all those west o
the A1leghenies and some in the east
conspicuous among the number beinl
Cornell, in which Sage college was 70
many years a separate institution 70
women, but now is only a woman
dormitory.
Naturally at this time attention i
conferred upon those Institutions 70
the higher education of women who's
names have become almost household
words. The bulletins of Smith. Wei
lesley. Vassar. Bryn Mawr. Noun
HOIyolke, Radcliffe, Barnard, Woman
College Of Baltimore, etc, are watche