The college graduate is far more immature than her characteristic self-reliance leads us to suppose.  By her side, the girl who has left school at eighteen, and has lived four years in the world, is weighted with experience.  The extension of youth is surely as great a boon to women as to men.  There is time enough ahead of all of us in which to grow old and circumspect.  For four years the student’s interests have been keen and concentrated, the healthy, limited interests of a community.  For four years her pleasures have been simple and sane.  For four years her ambitions, like the ambitions of her college brother, have been as deeply concerned with athletics as with text-books.  She has had a better chance for physical development than if she had “come out” at eighteen.  Her college life has been exceptionally happy, because its complications have been few, and its freedom as wide as wisdom would permit.  The system of self-government, now introduced into the colleges, has justified itself beyond all questioning.  It has promoted a clear understanding of honour, it has taught the student the value of discipline, it has lent dignity to the routine of her life.

Some reverence for the laws ourselves have made,

is surely the first and best lesson which the citizen of a republic needs to learn.

Writers on educational themes have pointed out—­with tremors of apprehension—­that while a woman student working among men at a foreign university is mentally stimulated by her surroundings, stimulated often to the point of scholarship, her development is not uniform and normal.  She is always in danger of sinking her femininity, or of overemphasizing it.  In the former case, she loses charm and personality; in the latter, sanity and balance.  From both perils the college woman in the United States is happily exempt.  President Jordan offers as a plea for co-education the healthy sense of companionship between boy and girl students.  “There is less of silliness and folly,” he says, “where man is not a novelty.”  But, in truth, this particular form of silliness and folly is at a discount in every woman’s college, simply because the interests and occupations which crowd the student’s day leave little room for its expansion.

The three best things about the college life of girls are its attitude towards money (an attitude which contrasts sharply with that of many private schools), its attitude towards social disparities, and its attitude towards men.  The atmosphere of the college is reasonably democratic.  Like gravitates towards like, and a similarity of background and tradition forms a natural basis for companionship; but there is tolerance for other backgrounds which are not without dignity, though they may be lacking in distinction.  Poverty is admittedly inconvenient, but carries no reproach.  Light hearts and jesting tongues minimize its discomforts.  I well remember when the coming of Madame Bernhardt to Philadelphia in 1901 fired the