The farmer and mechanic. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 18??-19??, 1912-10-22

"0Ill'l lOiI'So 3 toAotNo III - ~
country that their college training has
been a handicap, rather than { help.
So iusistent has this sentmCG. been
that an investigator was sent GO the
University Of Chicago by an eastern
magazine to study this question: Her
report, based on letters received from
every woman college graduate III us
mess whose address she knew, showed
that they had a decided grudge st
their alma matters: that they all feit
L c~o!leOe education was a Mother Of
Pearl decoration. very luxurious, but
when hard wood was in demand, they
were found wanting.
About twenty-five representative
women college graduates in business
IN New York were approached on this
point ana ali said the same thing. IF
u girl wishes TO each III a high school
o. college, or las means, let her have
the mother of pearl, but if she is to
enter business, she will find it a costly.
obstructive ornament. While Mrs.
Lyman is entirely loyal to Vas
str, she puts truth above theory, and
realizes that her experience like so
many others has pierced the bubble
OF the college woman's supremacy.
Mrs. Lyman, a graduate of Vassar,
81, is o a successful writer OF ar
ticl.s on home decoration, but she has
had six years of groping-aS she tells
iii his NEUTRALITY-SUSPICIOUS. she found
herself. The late Andrew Lang said
Of his years at Oxford, 1t vas d dawn
10 which there could never come a
day But college women report that
Immediately after this perfect dawn,
they are plunged into night and light
comes only after q long and hard
struggle.
(Alrs. Clara Brown Lyman is the
widow of Mr.. Trabue Lyman, a dro-
matte critic and correspondent of the
New York Times. She has been con-
nected with Doubleday, Page & Co.
ana wrote among other magazine ar
ticles, one published in the Worlds
Work OF May 1912, thai has made her
naine familiar to many readers In
addition she has edited g book on
home building and decoration.
"Fo the girl Of Il or Is facing self
support, don't go to college," says
Mrs. Clara Brown Lyman, a graduate
OF Fassar, emphatically.
Why not?"
Because uneducation is n worse
deterrent than no education. The
world is full OF illiterate successes and
classic failures. There are a few col
leSe women who succeed in New
York. but every one of them will tell
you, il she is honest. that she has
made good in spite Of her college
training; IL is a handicap, not a help
"When / came to New York to win
nay way after seven years OF teaching
in the High School Of Syracuse anC
some tentative newspaper work, my
eyes were still blurred with the ideal
istic dust blown into them by four
years OF academic life, and L surveyed
this great city and it's black mass of
swarming humanity with kind conde-
~scension as a background for my
soon-to-be shining success. SO ignor-
ant vas I OF the q, b, C, Of business
life, that I landed here in mid-sum-
mcr, expecting Immediately to receive
. position on a metropolitan newSpa-
per-
Il earned three dollars on one, and
spent one-third Of it riding up Fifth
avenue in a hanson, as far as / could
90, afterwards walking a many
weary blocks to my boarding house
al 7 had no car fare"
And then followed six years Of bit.
ter defeat, poverty and despair.
struggled, climbed the great shining
precipice, hat New York is to til
woman who comes here alone, with
out money or influence. Never a kind
~ branch do you find to clutch tic
never 81 sympathetic look in the stOn
faces you come up against-nor q
Nold 1tL utop " Diu SOu uOpC. J
few of US survive, but when I thin
OF the numbers who so down, craW
said simply. II wore only one blacl
back failures or continue the wear
struggle-futile finally until sickness
stranls them semi-beggarS upon tn
fharitable-or death which seen,
flnd takes them or Worse-than-Deat
clutches them-I don's like to tai
about it,"
But l always said TO myself durin:
these interminable six years, when
swung around without getting any
where, L am a spoke in a wheel
down now. but according to an indis
putable law that works in iife as wei
as in physics, the wheel must turn
and then I'll be on top That was tn
bracer l gave my dropping spirit
when | lived not in a hall bed-roor
no such luxury was mine, but in a
upper dungeon, a cell without a win
COW or sky-light. There I languiShe
Tor three dollars a week, when 1 wa