with one of his impressive sentences. Says this
truly great man, “If we fasten our eyes upon
the effects which education may throw forward into
immortal destinies, it is then that we are awed, amazed,
overpowered, by the thought that we have been placed
in a system where the soul’s eternal flight may
he made higher or lower by those who plume its tender
wings, and direct its early course. Such is the
magnitude, the transcendence, of this subject.”
SUPPLEMENTARY.
Some persons have asked, after hearing or reading
the foregoing suggestions, “Do not men
also work too much and read too little? Is not
the influence of fathers on their children to
be considered? Should not fathers be educated
for their vocation?” To these questions there
can be but one answer. Yes! and the yes cannot
be too emphatic. But the paper which formed the
nucleus of these chapters was written by a woman at
the request of women, to be read before a woman’s
club assembled to consider the question, “How
shall the mother obtain culture?” The very fact
that such a question had suggested itself to them,
shows that women feel the need of more than their
present opportunities for culture. If men feel
this need, there is nothing to prevent them from assembling
to discuss their unsatisfactory condition, to devise
ways of improving it, to consider their responsibilities,
and to inquire how they shall best qualify themselves
to fulfil the duties of their vocation. The writer
is under the impression that men’s clubs do
not meet especially with a view to such discussions.
The following paragraphs comprise the first part of
a letter published in “The New York Tribune.”
“These letters will speak to the hearts of thousands
of women all through the country, and particularly
to the women “out West,” as they have
already to my own. This problem has been revolved
in my mind again and again, but no clew has appeared
by which to solve it; and I have laid it down hopelessly,
feeling that there is no alternative but to submit
and carry the burden as long as strength endures, and
seeing no outlook for the future but in a brief period
of old age, when care and labor must come on younger
shoulders.
“I want to speak only of the condition of women
with whom I am best acquainted,—the wives
of farmers in this part of Illinois. Many instances
I have known of women who received in the East an education
in some cases superior to that of their husbands, but
a life of constant care and drudgery has caused them
to lose, instead of gain in mental culture, while
the husbands have grown away from them; and it is
only in subjects of a lower nature that they have a
common interest. A man, in his every-day intercourse
with other men, and his business calls into all kinds
of places and scenes, must be a fool not to receive
new ideas, not to become more intelligent on many subjects.
