the only opponent of women's suffrage to state that the atmosphere
of girls' schools suffers from the preponderating spinster element.
Suffragists may for once join hands with her and urge that the
married woman is in some ways better suited for young people than her
unmarried colleague.[8] Often the most valuable years of a woman's
life are lost to the school by her enforced retirement at marriage.
She gives to it her younger, less experienced years, when she knows
less of the world, less of the problems of the household, less of the
outlook of the parents. It must be remembered that the parents' point
of view is important if there is to be right co-operation between home
and school. To the teacher-mother there will come an altogether new
power of understanding, which should ultimately compensate the school
for broken time during the earlier years of the life of her children.
Provision for absence in these cases might well render more possible
provision for a "rest-term" or a _Wanderjahr_, such as should be
possible to all mistresses at intervals in their teaching career.
Mistresses are not as a rule aware that under most existing agreements
they may claim to continue their work after marriage. They would in
a large number of cases be rendering a service to girls' education by
doing so. Many secondary teachers will welcome the idea that they
need not abandon either the career they have chosen or the prospect of
their fullest development as women. The teaching profession would thus
retain many valuable members now lost to it on marriage, and the ranks
of married women be recruited by many well suited to be the mothers of
citizens.

The career of teaching adolescent girls gives to those following
it, in the daily routine, many experiences which others seek for in
leisure hours. The woman among girls has the privilege of handing on
to them the keys to the intellectual treasuries where she has enriched