“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?” “That is a most ignoble suggestion,” I could not help saying, “when you know that the object in modern life is the cultivation of the mind, the elevation of women, and men also, in intellectual life.” “I suppose so. I should like to have asked Abigail Adams's opinion on the way to do it.” “One would think,” I said, “that you didn't know that the spinning-jenny and the stocking-knitter had been invented. Given these, the women's college was a matter of course.” “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.” “So have I,” said my wife. “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.” “And you think, therefore, that they should not have a scientific education?” “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.” “Yes, and you might say the world was never before so credulous as it is now. But what was the other thing?” “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.” “Have you any statistics on the subject?” “No. I fancy it is only a notion of some old fogy who thinks education in any form is dangerous for women.” “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.” “Great Scott!” I exclaimed, “this is an interesting age.”