“Better give a young girl who is poor a common-school education, a little lift, and tell her to work out her own career.  If she have a distaste to the homely routine of life, leave her the opportunity to try any other career, but let her understand that she stands or falls by herself.

“...  Not every girl should go to college.  The over-burdened mother of a large family has a right to be aided by her daughter’s hands.  I would aid the mother and not the daughter.

“I would not put the exceptionally smart girl from a very poor family into college, unless she is a genius; and a genius should wait some years to prove her genius.

“Endow the already established institution with money.  Endow the woman who shows genius with time.

“A case at Johns Hopkins University is an excellent one.  A young woman goes into the institution who is already a scholar; she shows what she can do, and she takes a scholarship; she is not placed in a happy valley of do nothing,—­she is put into a workshop, where she can work.

“...  We are all apt to say, ’Could we have had the opportunity in life that our neighbor had,’—­and we leave the unfinished sentence to imply that we should have been geniuses.

“No one ever says, ’If I had not had such golden opportunities thrust upon me, I might have developed by a struggle’!  But why look back at all?  Why turn your eyes to your shadow, when, by looking upward, you see your rainbow in the same direction?

“But our want of opportunity was our opportunity—­our privations were our privileges—­our needs were stimulants; we are what we are because we had little and wanted much; and it is hard to tell which was the more powerful factor....

* * * * *

“Small aids to individuals, large aid to masses.

* * * * *

“The Russian Czar determined to found an observatory, and the first thing he did was to take a million dollars from the government treasury.  He sends to America to order a thirty-five inch telescope from Alvan Clark,—­not to promote science, but to surpass other nations in the size of his glass.  ‘To him that hath shall be given.’  Read it, ’To him that hath should be given.’

* * * * *

“To give wisely is hard.  I do not wonder that the millionaire founds a new college—­why should he not?  Millionaires are few, and he is a man by himself—­he must have views, or he could not have earned a million.  But let the man or woman of ordinary wealth seek out the best institution already started,—­the best girl already in college,—­and give the endowment.

“I knew a rich woman who wished to give aid to some girls’ school, and she travelled in order to find that institution which gave the most solid learning with the least show.  She found it where few would expect it,—­in Tennessee.  It was worth while to travel.