Kansas University Weekly.
325
Be good, dear child, and let who will be clever— —Kingsley.
Of making books there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh.
— Ecclesiastes XII, 12.
Knowlege is proud that he has learned so much;
Wisdom is humble that he knows no more. Books are not seldom talismans and spells. Cowper.
Oh fret not after knowledge!—I have none And yet my song comes native with the warmth.
O fret not after knowledge! I have none And yet the evening listens. He who saddens At thought of idleness cannot be idle, And he's awake who thinks himself asleep.
—Keats.
While memory watches o'er the sad review— Campbell.
FOR THE WEEK AFTER. $ ^{*} $
Und so ist mir das Dasein eine Last.
Das Tod erwünscht, das Leben mir verhosst.
—Goethe.
Oh weary life! Oh weary death!
Oh damned vacillating state!
Tennyson.
- (Students will please call at the office to obtain their grades)
Women as College Professors.
Amid the advance making in women's education there is at present rife in some communities a movement against the appointment of women to college professorship. The so-called argument used to support this movement slips easily from tongue to tongue. Enunciators of it speak it dogmatically, and seem not to question if it be wisdom or verbiage.
To your question why are not women appointed to vacancies in women's colleges, or in colleges termed co-educational? The answer is that women are not yet fitted for college chairs they have not yet had the advantages which men trained to special work have had.
Now this assertion is easily made—it costs
no more than another-and in the rush and hurry of life it has strangely enough come to gain a certain credit and credence. But is it an answer?
Women as a body, college women as a body, may not have had opportunities of education that men have had. But the question is not with women as a mass compared with men as a mass, with college women compared with college men. It is with a few specific women and a few specific men—with a few women who have given themselves to special graduate work compared with a few men specialists.
But more often these venders of popular nations go further and add: "No woman has shown herself competent to fill a chair of history, like that for instance in Chicago University." To this to the reasoning mind naturally arises the answer: "Has any woman ever in this time and land had a chair of history, like that for instance in Chicago University, to show whether or not she can fill it?" Men are called to college chairs before they have attained reputation by publications in the line in which they work.
Why should not the same chance be given women? It is through the repose and learned ease a college chair gives that the man puts out his best work. Before such a condemnation of women specialists is lightly made, would it not be wise first to see if the assertion is true? Truely the painfulest feature in the case is that we hear such sentences and pronunciamentos from college women—from whom if from any one we should expect calm judgment.
"No people," says Mr. Cable, "ever learned to vote except by voting." No man or woman since the world began ever filled any place of responsibility except by taking the place and meeting the responsibility. Human nature rallies to and fills the demands made upon it, whether the nature be in man's or woman's form. There is no reason to suppose that the appointment to a penny chair in a penny college or to a great chair in a great college will supervene the law.
If we glance at the past of education in our time and country we shall see how little "suc-