From: Twenty Years at Hull-House with Autobiographical Notes. by
Jane Addams. New York: The MacMillan Company, 1912 (c.1910) pp.
43-64.

[Editor: Mary Mark Ockerbloom]





CHAPTER III

BOARDING-SCHOOL IDEALS


As my three older sisters had already attended the seminary at
Rockford, of which my father was trustee, without any question I
entered there at seventeen, with such meager preparation in Latin
and algebra as the village school had afforded. I was very
ambitious to go to Smith College, although I well knew that my
father's theory in regard to the education of his daughters
implied a school as near at home as possible, to be followed by
travel abroad in lieu of the wider advantages which the eastern
college is supposed to afford. I was much impressed by the
recent return of my sister from a year in Europe, yet I was
greatly disappointed at the moment of starting to humdrum
Rockford. After the first weeks of homesickness were over,
however, I became very much absorbed in the little world which
the boarding school in any form always offers to its students.