The Education of American Girls. Anna C. Brackett

      FOOTNOTES:

       Table of Contents

      [16] On this statement we may perhaps rest, as our present distinct object is to illustrate mind, and not matter; though any reader will, of course, be entitled to his own “mental reservations” on the other side, and his own ideas on the subject of Attraction, etc.

[17] When those who are supposed to be the educated women of America are really educated, we shall not be pained through our sympathies, in view of such wide-spread evil as the following paragraph from a recent editorial of a leading New York journal would seem to attest.

      “It must be confessed, we fear, that wives and mothers are responsible for no little of our too general disinclination for that steady, persevering pursuit of high intellectual aims, of which Agassiz was such a bright example. They are naturally ambitious of the outward signs of social position, and also, on account of those they love, eager for the solid advantages to be obtained by money. They are not content if they cannot be dressed as finely and 'receive' as elegantly as their friends do; and, also, they fret if their children do not have such advantages of education and association as will secure for them an enviable future. And thus, husbands and fathers are driven, not only to ceaseless labor—that they would bear willingly—but to the abandonment of their best-loved pursuits, and their highest, most cherished purposes. Thus, money-productiveness comes to be the test of the value of all intellectual labor, even with men who would gladly devote their lives to science or to literature, and perhaps be willing, for themselves, even to be poor in a society in which poverty is almost a reproach. Thus it is that high aspirations are checked, and that strong resolves are broken. And thus it will be, until we have advanced to such a point of civilization and culture that we shall award that something which is only expressed by the word 'consideration' to other eminence than that which is attained in politics or in trade.”

      I venture the question with extreme diffidence, but would not this broader education of future wives and mothers save perhaps so much new legislation on the subject of divorce as is now in progress in those parts of the country most characteristically American?

[18] “We are imperfect beings, and in nothing more imperfect than in our power of appreciating each other's mental suffering. We see the odd contortions to which they give rise without seeing the reasons for them, and they are to us fit subjects for caricature. We all know Mrs. Pardiggle and Mrs. Jellyby, but few who have not borne it, know the pain of the pressure from within that forces natural activity into such distorted motion.”—Mary Taylor, First Duty of Women.

[19] “Young America is conceited, disrespectful, does not honor over-much his mother. Commonly he soon outstrips, or thinks he outstrips, her mental attainments. Her stature dwindles as his increases. At best, in his fancied greatness, he pities while he loves her. But what if she has traversed every inch of these intellectual regions before him, has scaled those heights, has conquered those enemies, has looked deeper into those mysteries, is superior at every point, can in an instant flood his darkness with light, sweeps with steady gaze the circumference of his groping thought, and shows him ever an angelic intellect as well as a mother's heart! With such a mother, filial love would almost become worship.

      “How much of Francis Bacon's greatness was due to his mother, who was the daughter of Sir Anthony Cooke, tutor to King Edward VI.? Every evening when Sir Anthony came home, he taught his daughter the lessons he had given to his royal pupil. Anne Cooke mastered Latin, Greek, and Italian, and became eminent as a scholar and translator, and she taught her son. A suggestion of Bacon's reverence for her, some conception of what he felt that he owed her, may be gained from the touching request in his will that he might be buried by her side. 'For my burial, I desire it may be in St. Michael's Church at Gorhambury, for there is the grave of my mother.'”—Address of Homer B. Sprague, at the laying of the corner-stone of Sage College, Cornell University.

[20] For a full and masterly discussion of this subject, its evils and remedies, I must refer to the report on the St. Louis Public Schools for the year 1871–2, by Wm. T. Harris, Superintendent, p. 80 et seq.

[21] A Mary Taylor, First Duty of Women, p. 93, Emily Faithfull, London, 1870.

[22] Extracts from the last two Reports of the President of Michigan University on this point will be found in the Appendix.

[23] On the subject of Co-education, I refer again to the Report of Wm. T. Harris, Superintendent of the Public Schools of St. Louis, for 1869–70, p. 17 et seq., where the actual effects, physical, mental and moral are given in detail.