disappearing even more rapidly than that illustrious quadruped.” “Are you not wandering slightly from the topic?” I ventured to inquire. “Not at all,” said Barbara. “I was stating merely that the Old-World, New-World young lady, with all her originality and piquancy, however charming, and however delightfully inevitable she may be, is not interesting from the educational point of view. Or rather I will put it in this way: the thoughtful, well-to-do American mother is wondering hard whether she has a right to be content with the ancient programme for her daughters, and is watching with eager interest the experiments which some of her neighbors are trying with theirs. We cannot claim as an exclusive national invention collegiate education for women, and there’s no doubt that my sex in England is no less completely on the war-path than the female world here; but is there a question that the peculiar qualities of American womanhood are largely responsible for the awakening wherever it has taken place? My dear, you asked me just now what a man like Mr. Perkins should do with his four daughters. Probably Mrs. Perkins is trying to make up her mind whether she ought to send them to college. Very likely she is arguing with Mr. Perkins as to whether, all things considered, it wouldn’t be advisable to have one or two of them study a profession, or learn to do something bread-winning, so that in case he, poor man--for he _does_ look overworked--should not succeed in leaving them the five thousand dollars a year he hopes, they need not swell the category of the decayed gentlewoman of the day. I dare say they discuss the subject assiduously, in spite of the views Mr. Perkins has expressed to you regarding the sacredness of unemployed feminine gentility; for it costs so much to live that he can’t lay up a great deal, and there are certainly strong arguments in favor of giving such girls the opportunity to make the most of themselves, or at least to look at life from the self-supporting point of view. At first, of course, the students at the colleges for women were chiefly girls who hoped to utilize, as workers in various lines, the higher knowledge they acquired there; but every year sees more and more girls, who expect to be married sooner or later--the daughters of lawyers, physicians, merchants--apply for admission, on the theory that what is requisite for a man is none too good for them; and it is the example of these girls which is agitating the serenity of so many mothers, and suggesting to so many daughters the idea of doing likewise. Even the ranks of the most fashionable are being invaded, though undeniably it is still the fashion to stay at home, and I am inclined to think that it is only the lack of the seal of fashion that restrains many conservative people, like the Perkinses, from educating their daughters as though they probably would not be married, instead of as though they were almost certain to be.”