Scorn any half-way achievements.  Make yourself a brilliantly educated woman, but look to it that in the effort you do not forget two other important matters—­health and sympathy.  My objection to higher education for women, which you once heard me express, is founded on the fact that I have met many college women who were anaemic and utterly devoid of emotion.  One beautiful young girl I recall who at fourteen years of age seemed to embody all the physical and temperamental charms possible for womankind.  Softly rounded features, vivid colouring, voluptuous curves of form, yet delicacy and refinement in every portion of her anatomy, she breathed love and radiated sympathy.  I thought of her as the ideal woman in embryo; and the brightness of her intellect was the finishing touch to a perfect girlhood.  I saw her again at twenty-four.  She had graduated from an American college and had taken two years in a foreign institution of learning.  She had carried away all the honours—­but, alas, the higher education had carried away all her charms of person and of temperament.  Attenuated, pallid, sharp-featured, she appeared much older than her years, and the lovely, confiding and tender qualities of mind, which made her so attractive to older people, had given place to cold austerity and hypercriticism.

Men were only objects of amusement, indifference, or ridicule to her.  Sentiment she regarded as an indication of crudity, emotion as an insignia of vulgarity.  The heart was a purely physical organ, she knew from her studies in anatomy.  It was no more the seat of emotion than the liver or lungs.  The brain was the only portion of the human being which appealed to her, and “educated” people were the only ones who interested her, because they were capable of argument and discussion of intellectual problems—­her one source of entertainment.

Half an hour in the society of this over-trained young person left one exhausted and disillusioned with brainy women.  I beg you to pay no such price for an education as this young girl paid.  I remember you as a robust, rosy girl, with charming manners.  Your mother was concerned, on my last visit, because I called you a pretty girl in your hearing.  She said the one effort of her life was to rear a sensible Christian daughter with no vanity.  She could not understand my point of view when I said I should regret it if a daughter of mine was without vanity, and that I should strive to awaken it in her.  Cultivate enough vanity to care about your personal appearance and your deportment.  No amount of education can recompense a woman for the loss of complexion, figure, or charm.  And do not let your emotional and affectional nature grow atrophied.

Control your emotions, but do not crucify them.

Do not mistake frigidity for serenity, nor austerity for self-control.  Be affable, amiable, and sweet, no matter how much you know.  And listen more than you talk.