Always after that, when Jane roamed over her prairie playground or sat dreaming under the Norway pines which had grown from seeds that her father had scattered in his early, pioneer days, she seemed to hear something of "the still, sad music of humanity" in the voice of the wind in the tree-tops and in the harmony of her life of varied interests. For she saw with the inward eye of the heart, and felt the throb of all life in each vital experience that was hers. It would be impossible to live apart in pleasant places, enjoying beauty which others might not share. She must live in the midst of the crowded ways, and bring to the poor, stifled little houses an ideal of healthier living. She would study medicine and go as a doctor to the forlorn, dirty children; but first there would be many things to learn. It was her dream to go to Smith College, but her father believed that a small college near her home better fitted one for the life to which she belonged. "My daughter is also a daughter of Illinois," he said, "and Rockford College is her proper place. Afterward she may go east and to Europe in order to gain a knowledge of what the world beyond us can give, and so get a fuller appreciation of what life at home is and may be." Jane Addams went, therefore, to the Illinois college, "The Mt. Holyoke of the West," a college famed for its earnest, missionary spirit. The serious temper of her class was reflected in their motto which was the Anglo-Saxon word for lady--_hláfdige_ (bread-kneader), translated as _bread-giver_; and the poppy was selected for the class flower, "because poppies grow among the wheat, as if Nature knew that wherever there was hunger that needed food there would be pain that needed relief." The study in which she took the keenest interest was history,--"the human tale of this wide world,"--but even at the time of her greatest enthusiasm she realized that while knowledge comes from the records of the past, wisdom comes from a right understanding of the actual life of the present. After receiving from her Alma Mater the degree of B. A., she entered the Woman's Medical College in Philadelphia to prepare for real work in a real world, but the old spinal trouble soon brought that chapter to a close. After some months in Doctor Weir Mitchell's hospital, and a longer time of invalidism, she agreed to follow her doctor's pleasant prescription of two years in Europe. "When I returned I decided to give up my medical course," said Jane Addams, "partly because I had no real aptitude for scientific work, and partly because I discovered that there were other genuine reasons for living among the poor than that of practicing medicine upon them."