students of Bryn Mawr College with the justifiable ambition to see this great actress in all her finer roles.  Those who had money spent it royally.  Those who had none offered their possessions,—­books, ornaments, tea-cups, for sale.  “Such a chance to buy bargains,” observed one young spendthrift, who had been endeavouring to dispose of all she needed most; “but unluckily everybody wants to sell.  We know now the importance of the consuming classes, and how useful in their modest way some idle rich would be.”

That large and influential portion of the community which does not know its own mind, and which the rest of the world is always endeavouring to conciliate, is still divided between its honest desire to educate women, and its fear lest the woman, when educated, may lose the conservative force which is her most valuable asset.  That small and combative portion of the community which knows its own mind accurately, and which always demands the impossible, is determined that the college girl shall betake herself to practical pursuits, that she shall wedge into her four years of work, courses in domestic science, the chemistry of food, nursing, dressmaking, house sanitation, pedagogy, and that blight of the nursery,—­child-study.  These are the things, we are often told, which it behooves a woman to know, and by the mastery of which she is able, so says a censorious writer in the “Educational Review,” “to repay in some measure her debt to man, who has extended to her the benefits of a higher education.”

It is to be feared that the girl graduate, the youthful bachelor of arts who steps smiling through the serried ranks of students, her heart beating gladly in response to their generous applause, has little thought of repaying her debt to man.  Somebody has made an address which she was too nervous to hear, and has affirmed, with that impressiveness which we all lend to our easiest generalizations, that the purpose of college is to give women a broad and liberal education, and, at the same time, to preserve and develop the characteristics of a complete womanhood.  Somebody else has followed up the address with a few fervent remarks, declaring that the only proof of competence is performance.  “The world belongs to those who have stormed it.”  This last ringing sentence—­delivered with an almost defiant air of originality—­has perhaps caught the graduate’s ear, but its familiar cadence awakened no response.  Has she not already stormed the world by taking her degree, and does not the world belong to her, in any case, by virtue of her youth and inexperience?  Never, while she lives, will it be so completely hers as on the day of her graduation.  Let her enjoy her possession while she may.