Bryn Mawr (Pa.) -- Social life and customs -- Fiction; Bryn Mawr College -- Fiction; College stories, American; Women college students -- Fiction
"After that we went on talking about all sorts of things, for Teddy
Atkinson couldn't have played better into my hands if he had been an
accomplice, and suggested the most diverse known subjects. College
settlement was closely followed by wireless telegraphy, yacht races, and
golf, especially at the Merion Cricket Club; and though I had to be wary
of terms sometimes when it came to the second and third, I didn't back
down once--not once. Then Mr. Ballantyne and I had a bit of a talk
together, in which I tried to introduce 'a current of new and fresh
ideas' into his mind, and gently remove some others already there. I
think his capitulation would have come very soon if he had stayed
longer, for when he rose to go he said that he did not know whether he
would find it best for his daughter to go to Bryn Mawr, but he hoped she
would prove as many-sided as he had found a college woman might be.
Wasn't that worth working hard for?"
Eleanor, leaning over and spanning Marjorie's forehead with her hands,
murmured "Undue cerebral enlargement----"
"Lee--you idiot!" cried Marjorie, "do you imagine for one moment that I
would have spent a laborious, uncomfortable, self-conscious evening to
make any living person like me on my own account? I didn't care what Mr.
Ballantyne thought of _me_--I wanted to make him like the college girl
in me, and show him how utterly he was mistaken in his baseless notions
of what college makes a woman."
Marjorie was roused now, and in earnest, and the light carelessness was
gone out of her manner. Her wide grey eyes, Eleanor could see by the
fire-glow, were shining with an eager light and her usually pale cheeks
were richly flushed. She rose from the hearth rug, and leaning with one
arm along the mantel, forcefully punctuated her words by tapping her
finger-tips upon it.
"Lee," she said in her clear voice, "we're at a sort of crisis now, I
think--not the same ring that there was, well, about twenty years ago,
when the question was, shall women go to college? That has been
answered, and the answer is, yes, because they _will_. But now there are
quantities of people, just like Mr. Ballantyne who think the fact that
women will do it adds a most unfortunate complexity to modern life; and
the burden of proof that college is the right thing for us lies with us.
I don't mean that we are to claim more for it than it can do, or pretend
to more than we have, but to be so broad-spirited and alert and
interested in everything, that we shall simply convince these people
that college training is the best thing that ever happened to
women--especially Bryn Mawr training. _I'm_ going on a crusade against
all infidels of the genus Ballantyne. Will you go along?"
Eleanor took Marjorie's outstretched hand and laid her other on her
roommate's shoulder. "Of course I will, Marge, as far as I can. But I'm
not capable like you, and can't do half----"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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