1885-1886
As time kept whispering its hastening call into my
ear I grew more and more vigorous in my outlook.
I was given strength to hurry faster myself, with
a certain energy to climb higher up, where the view
was wider, bigger, clearer. As I moved upward
I had but one fear, and that was of looking backward.
A minister, entrusted with the charge of souls, cannot
afford to retrace his steps. He must go on, and
up, to the top of his abilities, of his spiritual
purposes.
In the midst of a glorious summer, I refused to see
the long shadows of departing day; in the midst of
a snow deep winter, I declined to slip and slide as
I went on. So it happened that a great many gathered
about me in the tabernacle, because they felt that
I was passing on, and they wanted to see how fast
I could go. I aimed always for a higher place
and the way to get up to it, and I took them along
with me, always a little further, week by week.
The pessimists came to me and said that the world
would soon have a surplus of educated men, that the
colleges were turning out many nerveless and useless
youngsters, that education seemed to be one of the
follies of 1885. The fact was we were getting
to be far superior to what we had been. The speeches
at the commencement classes were much better than
those we had made in our boyhood. We had dropped
the old harangues about Greece and Rome. We were
talking about the present. The sylphs and naiads
and dryads had already gone out of business. College
education had been revolutionised. Students were
not stuffed to the Adam’s apple with Latin and
Greek. The graduates were improved in physique.
A great advance was reached when male and female students
were placed in the same institutions, side by side.
God put the two sexes together in Eden, He put them
beside each other in the family. Why not in the
college?
There were those who seemed to regard woman as a Divine
afterthought. Judging by the fashion plates of
olden times, in other centuries, the grand-daughters
were far superior to the grand-mothers, and the fuss
they used to make a hundred years ago over a very good
woman showed me that the feminine excellence, so rare
then, was more common than it used to be. At
the beginning of the nineteenth century a woman was
considered well educated if she could do a sum in
rule of three. Look at the books in all departments
that are under the arms of the school miss now.
I believe in equal education for men and women to
fulfil the destiny of this land.
For all women who were then entering the battle of
life, I saw that the time was coming when they would
not only get as much salary as men, but for certain
employments they would receive higher wages. It
would not come to them through a spirit of gallantry,
but through the woman’s finer natural taste,
greater grace of manner, and keener perceptions.
For these virtues she would be worth ten per cent.
more to her employer than a man. But she would
get it by earning it, not by asking for it.
