human
I have not seen much of your life, he said one night to Mr. Morgan;
gpt
Perhaps they have that appearance; but about the same number find it, as formerly, in marriage.
human
But I mean, you know, do they look to marriage as an end so much?
gpt
I don't know that they ever did look to marriage as anything but a means.
human
I can tell you, Mr. Lyon, my wife interrupted,
gpt
Not at all, I do assure you, Morgan replied.
human
I am just a humble observer. I see that there is a change going on, but I cannot comprehend it. When I was young, girls used to go in for society; they danced their feet off from seventeen to twenty-one. I never heard anything about any occupation; they had their swing and their fling, and their flirtations; they appeared to be skimming off of those impressionable, joyous years the cream of life.
gpt
And you think that fitted them for the seriousness of life?
human
Well, I am under the impression that very good women came out of that society. I got one out of that dancing crowd who has been serious enough for me.
gpt
And little enough you have profited by it,
human
I'm content. But probably I'm old-fashioned. There is quite another spirit now. Girls out of pinafores must begin seriously to consider some calling. All their flirtation from seventeen to twenty-one is with some occupation. All their dancing days they must go to college, or in some way lay the foundation for a useful life. I suppose it's all right. No doubt we shall have a much higher style of women in the future than we ever had in the past.
gpt
You allow nothing, said Mrs. Fletcher,
human
Oh, I admitted the fact of the independence of women a long time ago. Every one does that before he comes to middle life. About the shifting all round of this burden of earning a living, I am not so sure. It does not appear yet to make competition any less; perhaps competition would disappear if everybody did earn his own living and no more. I wonder, by-the-way, if the girls, the young women, of the class we seem to be discussing ever do earn as much as would pay the wages of the servants who are hired to do the housework in their places?
gpt
That is a most ignoble suggestion, I could not help saying,
human
I suppose so. I should like to have asked Abigail Adams's opinion on the way to do it.
gpt
One would think, I said,
human
Oh, I'm a believer in all kinds of machinery anything to save labor. Only, I have faith that neither the jenny nor the college will change human nature, nor take the romance out of life.
gpt
So have I, said my wife.
human
I've heard two things affirmed: that women who receive a scientific or professional education lose their faith, become usually agnostics, having lost sensitiveness to the mysteries of life.
gpt
And you think, therefore, that they should not have a scientific education?
human
No, unless all scientific prying into things is a mistake. Women may be more likely at first to be upset than men, but they will recover their balance when the novelty is worn off. No amount of science will entirely change their emotional nature; and besides, with all our science, I don't see that the supernatural has any less hold on this generation than on the former.
gpt
Yes, and you might say the world was never before so credulous as it is now. But what was the other thing?
human
Why, that co-education is likely to diminish marriages among the co-educated. Daily familiarity in the classroom at the most impressionable age, revelation of all the intellectual weaknesses and petulances, absorption of mental routine on an equality, tend to destroy the sense of romance and mystery that are the most powerful attractions between the sexes. It is a sort of disenchanting familiarity that rubs off the bloom.
gpt
Have you any statistics on the subject?
human
No. I fancy it is only a notion of some old fogy who thinks education in any form is dangerous for women.
gpt
Yes, and I fancy that co-education will have about as much effect on life generally as that solemn meeting of a society of intelligent and fashionable women recently in one of our great cities, who met to discuss the advisability of limiting population.
human
Great Scott! I exclaimed,