A few years since, when Mr. Higginson"s essay "Ought Women to learn the Alphabet?" first appeared in the _Atlantic Monthly_, and I was reading some of its keen sarcasms to a gentleman just returned from a tour of Eastern travel, he related a bit of his recent experience in the old city of Sychar, in Samaria. There was pointed out to him as an object of great interest and attention, a remarkable girl. She was the theme of animated discussion throughout all the neighborhood of Ebal and Gerizim--the observed of all observers, when she appeared on the street, or went with the maidens of Sychar to draw water from Jacob"s well, still the glory of their city. This little maiden"s distinction was that she was the first girl in that old city, who, during a period of nine hundred years, had transcended the allotted sphere of woman in so bold a step as that of going to school and learning to read. There had been no special purpose in the act. She had been attracted by the mysterious sounds from the room where boys were taking their first lessons in Talmudic law and lore, and had gratified her curiosity by learning what they meant. "It whistled itself," averred the little school-boy, apologetically, under fear of the rod; so she, another _it_, learned itself.
It was not until the steps of other little maidens were also tending towards school, that the gravity of her transgression, and the danger of the innovation, were at all comprehended. Then there was indeed an excitement among the orthodox Samaritans. In the opinion of the staunch appellants to the Law and the Prophets, she had transcended the limitations of her s.e.x, and the marital claim, "My wife is my shoe" was ominously threatened. Sychar had not been so roused for ages. The scribes and prophets waited in expectancy to see fire from heaven descend upon a city where such things had been suffered, or to see the young transgressor transformed, by the judgments of heaven, out of the proper semblance of womanhood. But when she appeared in the streets, with her sister maidens, performed her appointed tasks in rank and file with them, talked and chatted as heretofore--though perhaps gossiped less--and bore her pitcher as deftly on her head as ever, the matter began to die away, and she was only pointed out as the one who had _first_ sinned. True, the High Priest shook his head and prophesied "The end is not yet." But the fire had caught, and, according to the laws of fire, physical or Promethean, it spread, until between the mountains of blessing and cursing, a dozen Samaritan girls had learned the alphabet.
How far education has advanced in Sychar, what has been its effects upon the health of Samaritan women, or how much it has shaken the social basis, "My wife is my shoe," I have had no very late opportunities for learning; but, judging from the effects of learning the alphabet in other places, I cannot doubt that this innovation, seeing it did not precipitate the world out of its course, has been followed by others, less startling, perhaps, but tending the same way. Be this as it may, this initiate of an educational revolution in Sychar has its lessons for our times.
The Rabbis of the old Samaritan capital saw in this unlooked for seizure of the key of knowledge by the hand of a woman, a second fall, and to them the world again gave "signs of woe that all was lost." This Miltonian cry of woe to the world, through knowledge or privilege given to woman, has been repeated in every age by Rabbis and High Priests, who find the Eden of life in the poet"s picture of the human family, before woman aspired to taste the fruit of the tree "to be desired to make one wise;" when there was as yet no misunderstanding of the object for which man and woman each were made: "He, for G.o.d only; she, for G.o.d in him."
That the world was a paradise while man"s wisdom sufficed for her who was to behold G.o.d only through him, has been the teaching of creeds not yet dead. There is a lesson in the little Samaritan maiden"s repet.i.tion of the first transgression, as well as in its repet.i.tion a thousand times since. He that runneth may read in it this moral of the symbol, legend, or verity of Holy Writ, whichever way we may regard the story of the bite of the apple, viz.: that a desire _to know_ was evidently an element in woman"s original psychical nature, be it original sin, or otherwise; and correspondingly endowed, as is, just as evidently, her physical organization, to gratify this desire, we may conclude that she will compel some of the educational inst.i.tutions of the age to her service in its accomplishment.
I am glad that the recent alarm of Dr. Clarke, certainly the most rousing of our time, has been sounded. Rung out from his high tower of professional eminence and authority, it must and does attract attention.
It is a cry of "Halt!" and let us see where we are going. So, rude and harsh as are many of its tones, discordant with truth as we can but believe some of his statements, and more of his conclusions, I am glad it has been sounded. His facts are momentous. Let us heed them, and charge the sin where it belongs. The book will lead to investigations and in the end to an improvement in methods, and a higher, more thorough, education of women. Dr. Clarke thinks "that if it were possible to marry Oriental care of woman"s organization to her Western liberty and culture of the brain, there would be a new birth, and a loftier type of womanly grace and force." But his conclusions seem to be that this is impossible, and, since they cannot be united, of the two types of women, the brain-cultured, intellectual women of the West, and the Oriental women, "with their well developed forms, their brown skins, rich with the blood and sun of the East," he prefers the latter.
Two years since I visited some portions of the East, where these primitive Oriental types of womanhood are to be seen. Sometimes in the gardens of a harem, I have seen them, sitting, lolling, gossiping life away, only careful to guard their veiled faces from exposure, no matter if the rest of the body were as dest.i.tute of covering as their souls were of feeling, or their brains of thought. I saw more frequently another cla.s.s of women--those from whom poverty had rent the veil--some still clinging to a filthy rag, or diverting a more filthy shred from the tatters of their garments to cover their faces, because, as a sheik explained to me, "cause she shame she"s woman." Desiring to compare the length of the life of woman, under such conditions, with that of life which we have been wont to call civilized and enlightened, I often inquired the age of women whom we saw, and was surprised at being as often a.s.sured that women whose furrowed, wrinkled faces would indicate that they were sixty, were not more than thirty-eight--at most, forty years old. Most Eastern women that I saw, exemplified the "Oriental care of woman"s organization" by abandoning their own to a mere animal vegetation. They had borne children innumerable. These swarmed upon us from fissures in the rocks, from dens, caves, and old tombs in the mountain sides--a scrofulous, leprous progeny of wretchedness, with a few fairer types, to which some principle of "natural selection" had imparted strength to rise above the common conditions of life.
I had also some opportunity to see the "Oriental organization of woman"
under process of mental culture, in schools something like our own.
Especially anxious to learn all that pertained to progress in education in the old cities in the East, I sought every opportunity to visit schools, Mahometan, Christian, and Jewish, under the old or under the more modern _regime_, and at the risk of being set down as a true American inquisitor, I pressed questions in every direction that would be likely to be suggested to a practical teacher, studying the problem we are here trying to solve: "What is the best education for our American girls?"
The best schools that I visited are those established within twelve or twenty years some, quite recently, by the Prussian Protestant Sisters or Deaconesses, who have had a rare and severe training for their work--physical, mental, and hygienic. In these schools, also, are to be found pupils from the better cla.s.ses of the people, though they often have an orphan department attached, into which the neglected and wretched children are received, kindly cared for, and educated. In the opinion of these teachers, mental development is the source of health to their pupils, and they invariably spoke of the improving health and vigor of their girls under school training. They come, often, miserable and sickly from the neglect or abuse of ignorant mothers. Many such were growing healthy. The inert were growing active and playful, the deformed, greatly improving. One teacher said that to see the girls under her care inclined to any active play, until they had been in school months, sometimes years, was very rare. This inertness was more difficult to overcome in girls from the higher than the lower cla.s.ses, for, in addition to an inert physical organization, a contempt for labor, with which they a.s.sociated all exertion whatever, was born with them; and only through a long course of training--not until their brains began to take in the meaning and pleasure of study--could they throw it off; To rouse a girl and find out what she looked forward to in life, she had often asked her, "And what do you intend to _do_ when you leave school?" "Oh, sit," had been many times the answer she had received.
"Sit," which meant, she said, to wait and get married.
At Beyrout I visited several very interesting schools. The Superior or Princ.i.p.al of one told me she had been a.s.sociated, in her preparatory course, at Kaiserwerth, with Florence Nightingale, for two years; and she described to me the discipline of that inst.i.tution and others, where these teachers and nurses are trained. It is a discipline of severe study, accompanied by nursing, watching, hospital practice, and sometimes the hardest drudgery of work. She had often seen, she said, "Miss Nightingale, a born lady, on her knees scrubbing floors. But there was no distinction of persons in these inst.i.tutions. Those who came to them looked forward to lives, not of ease, but useful work, and they must be prepared to bear hardness as good soldiers." "But Miss Nightingale has broken down; may not the severity of this discipline have been one cause of what she is suffering now?" She did not think so; they had all had a training just as severe as hers, the sisters here, in Jerusalem, Smyrna, and everywhere, and they were well and strong. But there were limits to human strength and endurance; and Miss Nightingale"s work in the Crimea, performed under such conditions as it was, had transcended what the human organization could endure--cold, hunger, foul air, insufficient and unwholesome food, with such incessant work, watching, and nursing, that no human being was proof against it.
It was a miracle what Miss Nightingale had withstood before she broke down.
But these sisters wear no long or heavy dresses. Their uniform is a simple dark-blue-and-white calico dress-skirt neither long nor very full, sleeves close, yet allowing perfect freedom in the use of the arm, a simple white collar and ap.r.o.n, and cap of shining, spotless whiteness.
Their shoes, too, are after the pattern of those which, we are told, are always worn by Florence Nightingale--with a sole as broad as the foot they were made for, and fitted to the natural shape of the foot. The food, the sister said, at Kaiserwerth, as in all the training-schools, was "nourishing, but very simple." Such facts are worth noting. If they were accompaniments of our system of education, I do not believe that American girls would break down under the brain-work that any University course for men, in our country, imposes. As to the item of shoes, who does not know that a great deal more work, and better, can be performed in shoes that fit, than in such as tire the feet? And this is scarcely less true of brain-work than house-work. I believe that the shoes worn by young girls and young women now, are a great cause of nervous irritability, and, joined with other causes, may be a source of disease, "nervous prostration," so called in after life. I have heard women say many times, "Nothing in the world will bring a sick-headache on so quickly as wearing a shoe that hurts my feet." The oft repeated words have led me to watch my pupils in this respect carefully, and to study shoes and their effects, as among the evils which certainly ought not to be charged to brain-work, _per se_, nor to our school system, in general. It also made me take especial note of the shoes that the Deaconess sisters wore as a part of the dress in which, through long practice, they learned "hardness," and came out strong and healthy, but not the less accomplished, charming women.
The school at Beyrout, under charge of these sisters, is probably one of the best in all the East. I was conducted by the lady Princ.i.p.al through every department. In one room an Arabic Professor was engaged at the black-board, instructing a cla.s.s in studies pursued in that language. In another part of the same room, young ladies were reading to a lady-teacher an oration of Demosthenes in cla.s.sic Greek. Another cla.s.s was reading critically a portion of Milton"s "Paradise Lost," and yet another was engaged in preparing a French lesson. With all these cla.s.ses the lady sister spoke in the language under study or recitation, as did the teachers of each cla.s.s, with the exception of the Greek cla.s.s, in which, the sister said, the pupils were taught to read the cla.s.sic Greek, but allowed to speak the language as now spoken, as they had many pupils to whom this was their native tongue; but they ought to be able to read the works of their great men of another age. In another department I heard the same sister speak most beautiful German. This was her native tongue. Italian was also taught, and I heard it fluently spoken. It seemed to me that their course, though different, required nearly as much study as ours.
At the hotel, where I remained ten days, I made the acquaintance of two young ladies, of Greek and Armenian parentage. They had been in this school for several years and were still pursuing their studies. They spoke half a dozen languages, English, they said, the most imperfectly of any, but I have never seen an American girl who spoke French or German, when she graduated, as well as these girls spoke English, and their drill in music was quite as severe as that of American girls. They were taught arithmetic, but not to the extent that girls are in our schools. Physiology was also a part of their course. They were not so unctuously fat as many of the entirely idle women of the harems, whose object in life is to "sit," but to us, who are wont to call that a "well-developed form" which would seem to adapt its owner to do something in life, rather than to sit an existence through, their physiques would indicate more vigorous health than those of the "grave Turk"s wifely crowd," which Dr. Clarke wished he could marry to the "brain-culture" of our women. Their faces were still "rich with the blood and sun of the East," and I should pity the American who could find a loss in the exchange of the "unintelligent, sensuous faces" of the harem drones for the soul-light which, through brain-culture, beamed from the eyes of these Oriental young women.
In this school they had advanced to an innovation beyond anything to which the teachers had been themselves trained in Europe--quite beyond anything in the East, even the mission schools--the experiment of co-education, in the primary department, where a few boys had been admitted. Here I saw a daughter and a son of the Pasha of Syria in the same room and in the same cla.s.s. "And how does this system work?" I asked. "Well;" the sister said, "admirably; it is especially good for the boys, who, in this country, are so arrogant and overbearing. They are born with a contempt for girls; and begin, when they are but little things, to lord it over them. But it has a wonderful influence to humble their pride, to find the girls fully their equals, as they are, in their cla.s.ses."
Dr. Clarke says, that "the error of the co-education of the s.e.xes, and which prophesies their identical co-education in colleges and universities, is not confined to technical education. It permeates society." That it does so, is true, but that it is always an "error," we should not so readily admit, as one of its permeating effects upon society in Beyrout, may ill.u.s.trate. In one church, through conformity to Oriental prejudices against any sign of equality between men and women, the sittings designed for the men on one side, and the women on the other, had always been separated by a heavy curtain drawn between them.
Reaching far above the heads of the worshippers, even when they should be standing, it had formed a complete part.i.tion wall, dividing the church up to the s.p.a.ce in front of the preacher"s desk. But this curtain had, within the last few months, been removed, and the minister was now, on Sundays, dispensing a straightforward gospel, the same to men and women. Thus was the co-education system in the school already permeating the church! This was noticed with surprise by a missionary whom I had met on the Mediterranean, returning, after two or three years" absence in this country, to his former mission field, and who entered the church, for the first time after his return, with me. "Ah!" he exclaimed, "this denotes a great advance in Christian sentiment! This is as it should be. And how does it work?" he asked of the pastor of the church, in delighted surprise. "Admirably," was the reply. There was some remonstrance on the part of some of the older men at first, but even they did not seem to think anything about it any longer, and it was so much more agreeable preaching to the people all together, than to have his congregation separated by that high wall of a curtain, and to seem to be dispensing one kind of gospel to the men, and another to the women, of his church. Yet I had heard this good man, in a conversation with brethren who had come down to Joppa to meet him on his return, discussing with severe reprobation "this absurd woman movement" in America, "opposed to Christianity," "unsettling the churches,"
"pervading society in a thousand ways," "subversive of social order and refinement;" and, as one of its most ridiculous, almost monstrous effects, "putting into girls" heads the idea of going to college with the young men!" So little did he recognize as one impulse of the wave of the "woman movement," what he had but now been so heartily commending!
So often is the Babe of Bethlehem nurtured by those who, seeing him as he is, a fair and beautiful child, welcome and worship him; but who, looking through the mists of prejudice, especially fearing through him some subversion of their power, position, or interest, cry: "Away with him! crucify him! crucify him!"
At Beyrout I had several conversations with a most intelligent Armenian gentleman, from Constantinople, occupying an important governmental position. Having under my charge several young ladies travelling for study and instruction, our conversation very naturally turned upon our American educational systems, about which he was much better informed than many members of our public school boards. He had read our school reports, and his knowledge of our methods, courses of study, etc., surprised me. He discussed them, especially remarking upon the broadening influence of the increasing attention paid to the sciences in our schools, and the comparative effect of the positive sciences and the languages upon national character. And could it be possible that young men and young ladies pursued these studies together, he asked. The school reports which he had read would indicate this, yet he could hardly believe it possible. I must pardon him if he had seemed to observe the young ladies too closely, but he had been interested to study the influence of our ideas of education upon the first American girls he had ever met. And I could not imagine how the difference struck him--how it struck all Eastern men. Their freedom, their energy, their companionableness, was so different from women of the East. "And yet, they are perfectly modest!" he said. He had observed their anxiety to visit places of historical interest, getting up early in the morning and walking a long distance to do this. He had seen elegant, pleasing women in the East, women of graceful manners--the Eastern women were often that--but he had met few educated women. Their women were trained to please, but they were never educated to be a man"s intellectual companion. No Eastern man ever thought of a companion in a wife. But stopping thoughtfully for a moment, and seizing one of our idioms in his hesitating English, he said, "Yet I can"t see for the life of me why it would not be better that she should be."
This was the frank, involuntary utterance of a cultivated man, brought suddenly, for the first time, as he said, to consider the question of the education of women, an elemental half of humanity, in the unbia.s.sed, comprehensive view of the subject that can alone lead to a just decision. He was an Eastern man, outside of the turmoil and interests of the discussion. No personal or professional craft lurked unrecognized behind his conclusions to give them a bias. With him it was a question of social science, general human happiness and welfare. With us, however, where it has become a practical question touching domestic, social, and professional interests, its complications multiply, and it is exceedingly difficult for the most honest and unselfish occupants of place or privilege, to look at it without touching, in some of its intricacies, the question, "Does not s.p.a.ce for her to bourgeon," imply restricting me and mine?
The old Chinese wall of prejudice, surrounding the subject of woman"s education, from which there are so many out-comes, is not broken down yet. We only learn how strong it is when we come to some new point in the siege or defence. Sermons that have been preached at learned women, and jokes perpetrated at their expense, are still issued in modernized editions, and scare and sting as of yore. It is quite curious to note how the style changes, but the thought remains the same. Our fathers planned our earliest educational inst.i.tutions according to the best they knew. Our mothers economized and h.o.a.rded that they might leave bequests to colleges and theological schools, where their sons could be educated; while their daughters picked up such crumbs of knowledge as they could find. Both wrought their best, according to the light of their day, but the shadow of their fuller eclipse extends to us. Calvin"s requirements in a wife were with them as weighty to determine woman"s status in society as was his "Five Points in Theology," their creed: "That she be learned is not requisite. That she be beautiful, only that she be not ill-looking, is not important. But she must be of sound health, that she may bear me children. She must be industrious, economical, obedient, and know how to take good care of _my_ health."
This was the summary of what women needed to know and be, in the opinion of one regarded by our fathers as a law-giver, entrusted with the oracles of G.o.d. An old ma.n.u.script copy of a sermon, esteemed fifty years ago so rich in thought as to make it worth transcribing, to keep among family treasures, lies before me. From it, among more piquant instructions, I copy a sentence: "But if thou wilt please G.o.d, take much pains with thy heart, to make it stand in awe of thy husband. Look, therefore, not on his qualities but on his place, for if thou despisest him, thy contempt redounds upon G.o.d." "When a woman counts herself equal with her husband, though he be of meaner birth and smaller capacity, the root of all good carriage is dried up."
In proof that we have outlived only the form of such sentiment, I recommend the reading of Part VII. of Mr. Hamerton"s "Intellectual Life," a very recent publication, and, the reviewers say, "a charming book."
In a discourse on "Women and Marriage" he says: "It appears to be thought wise to teach boys things which women do not learn, in order to give them a degree of respect for men"s attainments which they would not feel, were they prepared to estimate them critically." This educational policy and its workings Mr. Hamerton ill.u.s.trates by numerous examples. He says: "The opinion of a distinguished artist was, that a man devoted to art might marry either a plain-minded woman who would occupy herself exclusively with household matters, and shield his peace by taking these cares upon herself, or else a woman quite capable of entering into his artistic life. * * * And of the two kinds of women which he considered possible, he preferred the former, that of an entirely ignorant person, from whom no interference was to be apprehended. He considered the first Madam Ingres the true model of an artist"s wife, because she did all in her power to guard her husband"s peace, and never herself disturbed him, acting the part of a breakwater, which protects a s.p.a.ce of calm and never disturbs the peace it has made."
A woman too ignorant to wish to comprehend her husband lest she should meddle in his pursuits, and who should find her crumb of the happiness that human life and family compact ought to yield, in "acting as a breakwater" to protect him, and "never disturb his peace," was a great artist"s view of the education needed by a woman! To this I would oppose my more humble experience, but I am sure there are women enough who would add theirs thereto, to make the sum equal in weight to that of Mr.
Hamerton"s artist friend. Among the women whom I have known in life, the most highly intellectual have been the least meddlesome; for the very good reason that they have been too busy with the work of their own brains to meddle with what concerned other people. Nor have such women been less the helps, fitted, if need be, to act as "breakwaters" to protect the calm of a man engaged in any great work. On the contrary, the discipline acquired in study and thought has been turned to account in this way, as well as in any other.
Mr. Hamerton gives another friend"s view of the education needful for a woman,--"one of the most intellectual men he ever knew," but "whose wife really knew nothing of his intellectual existence whatever." His theory was "that women ought not to be admitted to the region of masculine thought; it is not good for them."
So Dr. Clarke evidently thinks, and thinks he proves it physiologically.
The existence of the terrible evils he depicts is not to be doubted; and she would be less than a true woman who did not protest, by precept, preaching, and example, against the follies and sins of school or social life that induce such evils: but that it was eating of the fruit of the tree of knowledge--"persistent brain-work" even--that furnished Dr.
Clarke"s cases, "chiefly clinical," an experience of teaching extending over forty years would forbid me to believe.
As a woman, I have heard the smothered cry of woe as pitiful, of suffering as great, from those who prayed for death as a relief--though it was not from suffering of the body--as any that Dr. Clarke describes.
In our pity for physical suffering, some may well be reserved for the soul of her who
"Sighs amid her narrow days, Moving about the household ways In that dark house where she was born."
Indeed, the supposition of Dr. Clarke that psychical influences may have caused diseases which he describes, casts light upon some sad cases of invalidism which I have known, and where disease may quite as probably have been induced by soul-loneliness--intellectual starvation--as by the brain-work which, in his cases, he a.s.sumes to be the cause.
In the new education which is preparing for our girls, I trust regard will be paid to training physicians for the souls of women, as well as for their bodies, and there will surely be needed that very "feminine subtlety" that divines, if it does not reason out, a cause. "I believe in educating women to be physicians since I have read that book, if I never did before," has been the exclamation of many women who have read it. We want women physicians, educated to habits of thinking, logical, as well as physiological--capable of tracing psychical, as well as physical, causes. We want teachers so educated, women drawn to study the science of teaching through a love of it, as Florence Nightingale was led through seven years" preparation for her work--as a naturalist or an artist is drawn to his work. We want women on our School Boards and among our visiting committees, who know how to estimate the trust committed to them, and who will give time, thought, and study to their duties.
The science of education is, to-day, where the science of geology was fifty years ago. We are just beginning to think of it as a science. Men and women are waking up to its demands. Children, with their infinite variety of organizations, temperaments, and idiosyncracies, can no more be educated at random than plants, gathered from the four quarters of the earth, can be perfected through the same culture, and in the same climate and soil. Each child in the great crowd that gathers in our schools, is in some respects like a particular musical instrument, designed by G.o.d, in its complicated mechanism, to perform its particular part, to yield its own particular tone in the diapason of life; and I shudder when I think how rudely it is often played upon by untaught teachers--teachers who have drifted to their work, or resorted to it as a temporary occupation, for its profits, but who have never thought of studying its principles, as physicians, lawyers, artists, study the principles of their professions. Played upon by the unskilled hands of those who have never troubled themselves to study the physical, much less the psychic delicacy of this wonderful human instrument, the only wonder is, that society should yield the harmonies it does. No! women need to think more, not less; to increase, not diminish brain-work; to overlive the drudgery of it, whether it involve teaching, writing, study, the work of a profession, or house-work, by breathing into it the living spirit of love, which sanctifies and enn.o.bles whatever the hands or the brain find to do.
As regards different methods of education and their results, the old New England Academies may furnish some useful lessons. These began to be established from fifty to seventy-five years ago, and are now mostly displaced by Union and High Schools. But they were the initiate of a very important revolution in the status of the education of girls. In their earliest educational plans, our fathers had not taken their girls much into account. But these academies, though not planned with any special reference to giving the girls of the New England villages and the rural districts the opportunities of education, at once established a system of co-education, where the girls and the young men met on terms of as entire equality as any co-educational plan has ever since contemplated. The academy edifice was most frequently built by voluntary subscription from persons of all religious sects, and the school was in charge of trustees, so chosen as to avoid any sectarian bias or rivalry in its management. The building generally crowned some hill, or stood in the midst of a grove where s.p.a.cious grounds could be obtained. The school was usually under charge of a gentleman teacher--some college graduate--and a lady a.s.sistant. The course of study, aside from a course designed to fit young men for college, was largely elective. These schools were as perfect educational republics as can be imagined. The young men and the young women met in their cla.s.ses, on terms of entire equality and respect for each other. There were few rules in the school, and as to government, the pupils were mostly put upon their honor. The course of study was frequently identical, and with the exception of the Greek--sometimes the Latin--designed to fit young men for college--largely so.
My own course was precisely that of the young men in every study, though Greek, to which I was persuaded by my minister, led me through a cruel martyrdom of jokes from my companions. Repeating at school what their mothers said at home, they even then satirized me with proposals to get up pet.i.tions to open the doors of our State University to girls "who wanted to be men" I felt these jokes so keenly, that at first I pursued my study of Greek covertly, reciting out of school. But, cheered by my minister"s encouragement, I lived down jokes, and went into the cla.s.s with the young men, kept up with them, and continued the study until they went to college, and beyond, until a call from one of our Female Seminaries for a teacher "who had been educated by a man," broke up a course that I would have been glad to have extended through college.
And that without "wishing to be a man," without wishing for anything but to gratify a love of study, which was just as natural to me as to those I had thus far studied with. The daily hours of school were more than in our High schools, and we had recitations always, as usual, up to twelve o"clock on Sat.u.r.day, while the number of recitations a student was allowed to have, nearly always exceeded the number allowed in our High schools. I have never in any schools known more thorough and persistent study than was performed by students in these academies, and the standing of the girls was invariably as high as that of the young men. Such recitations as we had in History, Moral and Intellectual Philosophy, were like a life elixir; we went from them, not wearied, exhausted, but rested, exhilarated. We had gained bodily strength as well as mental clearness and force. They had infused life.
And where are the girls, who, forty, even fifty years ago, made trial of "persistent" study, of the dangerous system of co-education in the Academies? There has surely been sufficient time to test its physical effects on them. Where are they? Scattered throughout the world, a host of n.o.ble women, many of them doing brain-work still.
If my limits would permit, I could give the history of scores of them who were educated mostly in those academies, and who have continued study and brain-work ever since--who have borne children, reared families, and are yet strong and healthy, far beyond the average of women who have lived in ease and idleness--quite as healthy as women devoted alone to domestic cares.
The invalids on a long list of old a.s.sociates which Dr. Clarke"s book has led me to call to mind and look up, are, I have been surprised to find, among those who did "run well for a time," but they have turned back and ceased mental labor. Some have fallen into worldliness and a fashionable life, and are broken down under it. Others, restricted to some narrow creed of thought, have not dared to open their eyes to the light of any new day that is dawning on the world, until, ceasing to grow, they have, according to a law of nature, fallen into decay, invalidism, and "nervous prostration." Bringing this subject before several experienced persons, teachers, and one a physician, in the light in which I have aimed to bring it before my readers, I have asked, "And were these cases of invalidism (cases of which we have been speaking) from your best scholars? Were they, in short, persons still continuing to grow?" Stopping a moment to think, they have, in two instances at least, given precisely the same answer: "I never thought of that before, but they were not."
There are some other things that characterized methods, of study in those academies of forty or fifty years ago, that may instruct us. While the girls studied harder, had more recitations, extending through more hours in a day than are required in any of our High schools, they seldom studied in school, but at their homes or at their boarding places. This gave them freedom of position, liberty to sit or stand or walk, when they were at work on a difficult problem, or engaged in close thinking--an advantage which any one who has been a close student in later life, must appreciate--an advantage which I have recently heard young ladies in our university say, they could hardly conceive of before they went to the university from the high school where they fitted. This also led them almost every hour into the open air, and to take a little exercise, as the girls in our university and in some of our colleges are forced to do, effecting a visible and marked improvement in the standard of health among the girls in the university above that of the girls in the High schools.
Again, they had seldom more than one flight of stairs to climb; nor were they, in climbing these, burdened with skirts that weigh five, six, and even seven pounds, such as I know from actual weight, carefully reported, young girls of the present time sometimes wear in climbing three immense flights of stairs! Let any woman undertake this with her arms full of books, her hands tied in holding them, so that she cannot clear her feet from her long, heavy skirt, with its manifold flounces switching about them, while she is laboring to lift them with a movement of her hips and pinioned arms, and yet feels herself liable every instant to be thrown from her balance by all this enc.u.mbrance--let her undertake this, and she will learn that there is something besides study that is endangering the health of our school girls. Again, let her take her stand at the top of one of these long flights of stairs--the last in the building, perhaps--reaching up to the floor where the High school rooms are almost always located; let her watch the flushed faces of a cla.s.s of girls coming up to recitation, note the palpitating, almost breathless efforts with which some of them achieve the last few steps; and when they have accomplished this, see here and there one clinging to the post of the bal.u.s.trade, or leaning speechless against the wall until she can recover breath to proceed another step; let her do this, and she will get another insight into the causes of invalidism among the girl graduates of our schools. "How can a mother rest when she doesn"t know where her boys are?" we often hear asked. How can a mother rest when she doesn"t know where her girls are, or by what dangerous steps they have gone where they are? How can she rest? Simply, in most instances, because she has not herself been educated to any comprehension of the danger her child is in.
Neither did school-girls, in that earlier time, perform their brain labor under an outside pressure scarcely less than that of one of those iron helmets which one sees in the Tower of London, and which, the guide a.s.sures us, with an emphasis implying that he does not expect us to believe it, were actually worn by some Knight at the battle of Cressy, Agincourt, or some other which resulted in victory to the English. And how those old warriors did bear up under a head-gear weighing ten or twelve pounds, to fight the battles of their age, I have been best able to comprehend when I have seen what girls of our age can bear up under and live at all, much more, study.
I have a friend, an old pupil, a truly intellectual woman, who has not broken down under much more brain-work, since she left school, than she ever performed in school. Her husband greatly enjoys her intellectual tastes, and, without stint or jealousy, encourages them; only he would not have her "odd," nor so very different from "other ladies of our acquaintance." He would have her study; he "doesn"t believe a woman should fall back in her intellectual life any more than a man." He would have her paint, and practise, and study; and since he provides abundant help, he thinks she may. He will buy any book, or set of books, to aid her; but he would have her wear her hair as "other ladies wear theirs, and not give occasion for all those flings about women who want to know so much," and go with their hair about their faces and themselves at "sixes and sevens," generally. "And why can"t she wear her hair put up?" "Sit down, and I will tell you why," she said, one day, rather out of sorts; he did not yield very ready compliance. But she persuaded him to permit her to ill.u.s.trate her "why." He sat down, and she began by twisting his abundant curls into a knot as tight as could well be held by a strong hair-pin. This was the "underpinning" on which to rear the structure. So, with "switch" upon "switch," and "braid" surrounding "braid," a "frizz" here and a "frizz" there, with a few bows for capitals, and a few curls for streamers, and twenty-four hair-pins for fastenings and bracing-rods, the tower was finished, in less than half the time, as she a.s.sured him, owing to the advantageous position she enjoyed in her work, that it would take her to rear the same structure on her own head, and it was precisely like what other ladies of their acquaintance wore.
"Good gracious!" he exclaimed, "you do not pretend that women wear all this false pile on their heads!" "Yes, I not only pretend, but solemnly a.s.sure you that I have not exceeded by a braid or a curl what most of the ladies of our acquaintance wear on their heads." "Well, what do women want to be such fools for?" he asked impatiently. "What did you want me to be such a fool for?" she answered. "Well, take down the thing and let me go," he said, "you may wear your hair as you please, I have learned _why_ enough for one day." "No, stay and let us read that chapter of Mill on "Liberty" that we were going to read together sometime," she said. "Liberty! I think so. I wouldn"t wear that thing half a day for all the profits of my business for a year!" "Well, then, we"ll let Mill go, for I think if I have taught you _why_, with all that toggery on my head, I can"t do anything, I have done enough for one day," she said.
Think of a girl thus burdened working through a problem in mathematics, or arranging, in her mind, an a.n.a.lysis of it, which will be called for in five minutes; or, of her thinking over, so as to give clearly, with its heads and deductions, an abstract of a chapter in some branch of science! She will say, perhaps, that "one gets used to it and thinks nothing about it," and she thinks, no doubt, that what she says is quite true. But go to her room in the evening after the world is shut out, and you will, in all probability, find her with her wrapper on and her "braids" and "switches" off, and she will tell you, without thinking, what is nearer the truth--that you must excuse her, but she has a "hard lesson to get, and she can study so much better in this way, when she feels perfectly comfortable." A straw will tell which way the wind blows, and straws of hair-pins, during months of pain and feebleness, may, in after life, tell which way the wind has blown.
Just in face of some of these hindrances, in the way of the higher education of our girls, I place some reports from schools and colleges which I have received. The following is from a teacher of high reputation, Superintendent of Public Schools in one of our large cities, a gentleman who has studied the science of teaching as few have done, and added to the usual attainments of a college graduate, studies which would have given him a right to practise as a physician. He has now been engaged in his profession, without a term"s remission, for thirty years:
"It is not hard study that breaks down the health of our girls, but the circ.u.mstances under which they study, the demands of society and its thousand social follies, with all their excitements. It is the foolish ambition of parents to have their daughters accomplished before they are out of their teens, often allowing them to carry on five or six branches at a time instead of two or three. These, and some other like causes, as I think, do more towards breaking down the health of girls at school, than much study. The ability on the part of the girls to master the several branches, is fully equal to that of the boys, and when an amount of study is reached that is injurious to girls, we have gone as far as is profitable for boys. Boys also break down in study, from some of the evils of society. As to co-education of the s.e.xes, my experience, observation, and reading, all convince me that it is the best way. If there are incidental evils in such a course, they are only incidental, and I can find those of equal, or, I think, of greater magnitude in separate schools."
Michigan has tried the experiment of co-education perhaps as thoroughly and extensively as any State in the Union--as any territory of equal extent in the world. Her six colleges, her University, her Normal school, all her higher inst.i.tutions of learning--with the exception of the Michigan Female Seminary, on the Mt. Holyoke plan, and some young ladies" private schools--are open to young men and to young women on the same terms. There are no separate roads for the s.e.xes up the Hill of Science, from the lowest primary, to the highest professional school.