the self-conscious and nervous invalid, nor for her who in the
exuberance of youth recklessly ignores the laws of a healthy life.
The good society of scholars and of libraries and laboratories has
no place and no attraction for her who finds no message in Plato,
no beauty in mathematical order, and who never longs to know
the meaning of the stars over her head or the flowers under her
feet. Neither will the finer opportunities of college life appeal
to one who, until she is eighteen (is there such a girl in this
country?), has felt no passion for the service of others, no desire
to know if through history or philosophy, or any study of the laws
of society, she can learn why the world is so sad, so hard, so
selfish as she finds it, even when she looks upon it from the
most sheltered life. No, the college cannot be, should not try
to be, a substitute for the hospital, reformatory or kindergarten.
To do its best work it should be organized for the strong, not
for the weak; for the high-minded, self-controlled, generous,
and courageous spirits, not for the indifferent, the dull, the idle,
or those who are already forming their characters on the amusement
theory of life. All these perverted young people may, and often
do, get large benefit and invigoration, new ideals, and unselfish
purposes from their four years' companionship with teachers and
comrades of a higher physical, mental, and moral stature than
their own. I have seen girls change so much in college that I have
wondered if their friends at home would know them,--the voice,
the carriage, the unconscious manner, all telling a story of new
tastes and habits and loves and interests, that had wrought out
in very truth a new creature. Yet in spite of this I have sometimes
thought that in college more than elsewhere the old law holds,
"To him that hath shall be given and he shall have abundance,
but from him who hath not shall be taken away even that which