ADDRESS 
TO THE 
Students of Radcliffe College 
Beltverefc 3anuar\> 17 1895 
BY 
S. WEIR MITCHELL M.D. LL.D. 
Harvard and Edinburgh 
CAMBRIDGE, MASS 
1896 President, Dean and Students of Radcliffe : — 
One unlucky day your Dean caught me in an amiable mood by 
reason of my having seen an old friend whom I had been weak 
enough to advise to come hither to be the shepherdess of this 
flock. I was told of her wish that I should give you of such 
wisdom as I chance to have. I am, like other men, disposed to 
say “yes” to any woman I like, and generally to all women, 
because of my conviction that, as they have had knowledge of 
good and evil longer than men, they must, on the whole, know 
what is best for us. 
I did urge as a trifling difficulty that I had nothing to say, and 
did not possess the art of saying nothing so as to seem to say 
something, and so what could I but re-coin mere platitudes. My 
friend replied at once that what she most desired of me was such 
platitudes as I was likely to furnish. Now this is the hardest 
task you can set a man, — to hearten up maxims of common 
sense, give them wings and make them seem angelic counsel- 
lors whom you had better make haste to entertain. 
To be able to do this with efficiency is one of the hall-marks of 
genius. The world needs no more wisdom; what it wants is the 
men who take the commonplaces of social life,— the average 
sense of man, or the much worn words of Christ, and breathe 
into them fresh life sending them forth anew so clad that we 
welcome the familiar thing, which, after all, is but an ancient 
arrow refeathered for a new flight, and winged from a bow of 
power. Then men hear, and wonder, and obey, and say these 
things are indeed of the gods. 
But for such triumphant power of speech a man must be Phillips 
Brooks or John Ruskin. I, alas, am no such messenger. Never- 4 
theless, I earnestly want to win your attention, and even your 
trust to-day, for I deeply desire that you go hence thoughtful if 
not convinced. 
As a test of my good will to you, and of the view I take of 
to-day’s duty, I have asked leave to talk to you and to you alone. 
I hope, then, it may be agreeable to you to hear what I came so 
far to say. Some of my thought will be serious, and some as 
trivial as questions of talk or dress. Yet it may please you to 
turn your mind from such learning as scares me to think upon, 
and hear awhile the wisdom of a lower world reported in the 
tongue of common mortals. 
To-morrow is always wise with Vesprit de I'escalier, and thus 
it was not until the next day that I knew how, and how prettily I 
should have answered my friend’s request. 
There is a burlesque play on the Princess in which the shy 
Prince asks his fairy godmother what on earth he shall say to the 
learned Princess and her ladies. Fairy wisdom answers : 
“My Prince, just strike an attitude, 
And talk some pleasant platitude; 
’T will surely fetch you gratitude 
Because, you see, equations 
Are their very mildest rations : 
And a lot of mathematics, 
And the learning of the attics 
Do make mere insipidity 
Accepted with avidity ”— 
which is why learned ladies are apt to marry dull men. 
What I did say further was, that to talk platitudes so near to 
the city which closely resembles what St. Paul described Athens to 
have been, was — well, somewhat of an adventure. I may also 
have reflected that I was rather an intellectual tenderfoot in this 
neighborhood, where everybody’s wits are like the fire-engine 
horses,— ready to jump at the smoke of a passing pipe. 
With these thoughts in mind 1 propose to talk to you; and 
to satisfy my medical and social conscience, I shall cover more 5 
ground than your Dean desired. I shall speak of : The woman 
who wants the higher education ; the life while winning it; the 
life after it. 
First, let me state my creed. I believe that, if the higher edu- 
cation or the college life in any way, body or mind, unfits women 
to be good wives and mothers there had better be none of it. If 
these so affect them that they crave merely what they call a career, 
as finer, nobler, more to their taste than the life of home, then 
better close every college door in the land. In thus speaking I do 
not refer only to the married life. A vast number of women who 
do not marry come to have, at some time, charge of households 
or of children not their own. This surely is the natural life of 
woman. I say the like of men. It is their natural place to meet 
the outside cares of life, and whatever of dissipation, mistakes, or 
indolence unfits them to endure and to labor in their proper sphere 
is as much to be deprecated as is anything which makes a 
woman hate the duties of home, or renders her, as she may think, 
superior to their claims. 
And now as to my task. It is rather a large question I am 
asked to deal with. I could talk of many things, but I fancy 
that I am expected, as a physician, a man of science and of letters, 
to say whatever may be helpful to you as to work, play and habits 
in your college life. I am perhaps less unfit for the task set me 
than some might be who are outside of my profession. I have 
seen in my long medical career a great number of women, and 
men too, who have been prevented by ill-health from being in life 
either useful or pleasant to themselves or to others. Very often 
these failures have been due to neglect of or inattention to 
obvious matters of diet or exercise, to lack of correct self- 
estimates, tendencies to gauge endurance by the standards of 
more vigorous people. I see women fall into ill-health, too, 
from self-devotion unintelligently guided, from emotional causes 
such as rarely injure the lives of men, from lack of willingness to 
yield to the just demands of their own physiological conditions, 
from such defects of character as make it hard to set aside with 
decisiveness worry and the frictions of life. 6 
As to the larger part of these failures of character which work 
so much ruin, let me say a word in passing. They begin in child- 
hood, and are usually the fault of want of intelligent discipline. 
To teach children habitual decisiveness, thoughtful patience, 
self-restraint, kindness, endurance, is not hard at the plastic 
age. These qualities do not need high intelligence. They are 
moral characteristics; if won in youth, they assist much in 
making the later and large use of the mind easy and safe, and are 
vastly protective when we come to face the inevitable shocks and 
disasters of existence. It is not study nor mere work which 
cripples. Mere intellectual labor, guided by intelligence and 
gauged by personal standards, and, too, by some regard for impla- 
cable physiological requirements, is never a cause of ill-health in 
those who to begin with are wholesome in mind and body. 
To return to my creed. I am for independence as a human 
right. I want women to be free to be and to do what they like. 
I want no “ paucity of alternatives.” But with this freedom to 
choose, and this human right to select, I, personally, no more 
want them to be preachers, lawyers, or platform orators, than I 
want men to be seamstresses or nurses of children. I want 
freedom within the noble limitations of sex. 1 do not want you 
to say as they do at—I came perilously near an indiscretion — 
“Until we can abide in our work by the standard of man we 
have not reached the ideal of true womanhood.” 
I believe that most women would be wiser, better, and therefore 
happier, for larger intellectual training. Is it to be desired for 
all women? By no means; nor for all men. Just what it 
should be is another matter. For most women, who are to live 
the ordered and usual lives of women, it should be such as 
cultivates tastes which bring intelligent joys into the midst of any 
life whether its lot be care-filled struggle, or ease and luxury, 
whether its fate be to live single, or to marry. 
But before we go further, let us pause and reflect. You come 
here, and for what? To acquire knowledge? Why? What we 
have not, what is hard to get, what few attain, is apt to be over- 
valued. Is it not De Quincy who says that Greek is so much 7 
thought, of because of its difficulty, and that few who acquire it 
get out of it more than the joy of wrestling with accents ? I have 
found many young women, and some men prone to over-rate the 
uses and the joy to be had out of the mere knowing of what 
others do not know. This idea becomes a sort of possession; 
that is, it owns you, not you it. That is what possession 
means. 
It is sometimes a sad mistake. There are for whom all this 
acquisition of dead tongues and mathematics is needed food ; for 
the rest, it does no good, and leads on to less than does a liberal 
knowledge of German, French and English. 
Knowledge is to be desired for joy, for use, and for the train- 
ing the method of its getting gives. For joy! Let us in this 
connection think of that difficult study Anglo-Saxon, with its sea 
tongue, and then think of it, as its makers were driven inland, 
all its resounding ocean language pitched aside on to the kitchen 
middens of disuse,— the dust heaps of a changeful tongue. 
Are you seeking this knowledge as a real means of learning 
how from this interesting baby talk of a great people the better 
to love and appreciate what thereafter has been written in the 
adult tongue of our race ? That is good use of knowledge. 
Have you won this language so as to be able to read the great 
riddles of Caedmon, and the sea songs of our fathers? That 
is knowledge for joy, for the sweetening of life, for help of noble 
company in sorrowful hours, for increase of the delights of 
leisure; but — and this is a large but — to know any foreign 
language to such perfection as to enjoy (not to pretend to enjoy) 
its poets is, believe me, rare. To this day I cannot get out of 
French verse what I should, and yet to read it is as English to 
me. I have much distrust of this excuse for the learning of 
Greek or Anglo-Saxon. If you crave these because they are 
difficult to acquire and few win them, you may as well get a 
book of charades and exercise your mind on them. You are no 
better off. This hunger after the riddles of learning, this avarice 
of knowledge only because it is knowledge, has no sympathy 
from me. It is neither for honest joy nor for real use. 8 
I go a step further. Knowledge, with power to use it for the 
begetting of other knowledge, has its evils, or may have. If it 
become an overmastering passion, even in genius, it may be satis- 
fied at a cost beyond its worth. Would you see what it can do ? 
How in one with a really splendid intellect it can destroy happi- 
ness, obliterate the moral sense and substitute for love of family 
the extreme of selfishness and even contempt for the decencies 
of existence ? If so, read the story of Sonia Kovalesky, and 
remember it is not needful to be a genius in order to be morally 
hurt by the greed of learning. I wish only to call to your minds 
the danger which may arise out of the excess of a relatively good 
thing. 
If you can learn any branch so as to liberalize your soul and 
give to joy fresh wings, well and good; but to do this through 
acquiring a language as dead as Greek or Anglo-Saxon is a task 
beyond the possibilities of most folk. I want you, therefore, to 
be clear as to what you want and why you want it. Are you to 
be a teacher ? That is one thing. Are you to have a home life 
which involves no use for the sharply defined knowledge which 
is to be in turn a source of knowledge? Then think a little 
of why this or that science is desirable. 
“ It is of no moment to her own worth or dignity that a woman 
be acquainted with this science or that; it is of the highest 
moment that she be trained to habits of accurate thought; that 
she should understand the meaning, the inevitableness and the 
loveliness of natural laws.” It is no less of use that history 
should broaden her sympathies, and sociology enlighten her con- 
science. If the character is dulled in the seizing of learning,— 
nay, if it be not built up, confirmed and enlarged, then give us 
for this world’s use the nobler heart and the less tutored brain. 
Let then the woman while training her mind use for this such 
knowledge-getting as may help her thereafter to enlarge her views 
of life, such as may give to existence 
The strength which is of sweetness born, 
The sweetness born of strength. 9 
And I could tell you how to do this, and what to study; but I 
resist the temptation, and turn anew to my task with but a line 
from one whom you, I dare say, know better than I. 
“The greatest clerkes ben not the wisest men. 
I have dealt, and but too briefly, on acquisition of knowledge for 
technical employment; on knowledge for enlargement of the joy 
of life; and I have mentioned knowledge for the training of the 
mind. The phrase is undescriptive. Whether you want to 
acquire this or that for joy or for use, the mode of getting it is 
important. The most of our education does not train the mind 
with certainty so as to give it swiftness, dexterity, alertness and 
capacity to observe. You may learn a world of things and remain 
as untrained, save as to memory, as when you began. 
I have small leisure to particularize. But, suppose that in 
learning English literature you learn the names, dates, rythms 
and works of the poets ; who wrote this or that, and when, and 
perhaps where they wrote, and so on; well, that is what is called 
education. I have heard such questions asked. I have seen 
college themes which rose no higher, and went no more deeply 
into that great fact, the coming and going of a poet. 
But let an imaginative teacher deal with such a subject, and 
the result will be both acquisition of knowledge and mental 
training. A month of the Shepherd’s Calendar is to be taken, or 
a book of the Fairy Queen; for the best of study, a poet must be 
studied at first a little at a time. 
The words he used are learned, and which of these he made or 
altered or revised. You learn the amazing fact that English was 
more or less fluent then, and not as now crystallized, and that a man 
could make a word at will and be free from imprecative critics. 
The imagination is set free to wonder if in their every day 
life Sidney and Shakespeare coolly manufactured words at will, 
mere infants of the moment; even genius no longer has this 
privilege. Out of the anonymous democratic gulf we now and 
then get a new word. The royal word mints of English are 10 
forever closed. Look at our conscious poet’s list of words at 
the close of each month of his calendar. “ Glosse ” he calls it. 
You can find such in the Elizabethan editions of Chaucer. 
Which of the words are dead ? Which live ? 
Once master of his vocabulary, his rhythms and methods, you 
begin to look for the man in his verse. How much of his char- 
acter is there by design or chance writ strong for after years ? 
You ask why he wrote and where? Nine years the twelve books 
of the Fairy Queen lay unpublished; Sidney never published 
a line. Was this wealth of thought and fancy quite unused all 
this while ? The question opens wide the peculiarities of the 
literary and social life of the time. 
You must lack wings if on such a track you do not come at 
last so to use fancy and imagination as to image out what he but 
hints at or describes. The history, the politics, the loves, the 
hates of history are here. This poet is the secretary who writes 
dispatches as to the turbulent Ireland of his day. His religious 
convictions are clear to be read and set forth with such frankness 
as Shakespeare sedulously avoided. Verse so read, so studied, 
gives delight of knowledge and trains the mind; but this is far 
away from what in the schools is called the study of literature. 
And for the general result of your life here, what as to that ? 
Where does it all carry you ? 
Character is after all the true business of life. If we are here 
for any visible purpose it is this. And so comes up the question 
as to whether you can get the silver and not let fall the gold. 
In a word, what perils does the woman run who at the time of 
maturity breaks away from home to live among strangers and 
acquire knowledge ? I do not say that ill must come of it; I do 
say that it may, and it is your business to be sure that it shall not. 
Now, let us go back to my question. The young woman 
wants to have the higher education. And here the discussion 
brings me face to face with a difficulty. It is impossible to 
speak frankly as to certain matters. I never could, and never 
will, lecture medically to women, and so I must talk as best 
I can, and you must read unspoken wisdom between the lines. 11 
A man at college gets contact with men, larger views, ac- 
quaintances, education (either general or special), training for law, 
physics, business, engineering,— what not. Possibly many of 
you have the desire or the urgent necessity to be able to teach, to 
study medicine, to do some form of literary work. Take care. 
This seems to release you from obligations as to home duties 
and cares, from household vexations, the looking after children, 
those of other folks or your own. But this is not so in the 
life of fact. Few women of those who do not marry escape 
the need to assume some of these natural functions. Most 
folks think vaguely of home as meaning marriage, husband, wife, 
children; but for me, its foremost and most beautiful human 
necessity is a woman; and, indeed, this is of her finest noble- 
ness, to be homeful for others, and to suggest by the honest 
sweetness of her nature, by her charity, and the hospitality of her 
opinions, such ideas of honor, truth, and friendliness as cluster, 
like porch roses, around our best ideals of home. It is instinc- 
tive, and civilization kills our instincts. Man has none left; 
woman yet has, and natural duties also ; he has none which are 
implacable. 
I wish all women, before they go to college, to have a sensible 
competency of common household knowledge, and of all a house 
needs where means are small. As to this, the French are more 
wise than we. Their training for the work of teaching is most 
severe and systematic, but these foolish people ask some curious 
questions of women before they will examine them at all as to 
the science required for admission to the Ecole Normale. Why 
should not we too insist upon these preliminaries ? The primary 
and grammar schools demand a certain amount of knowledge 
as to sewing, cooking, etc., and these are elaborately set forth 
in the programmes. These matters are much insisted upon in 
those who enter the Ecoles Normales. 
In these higher schools are taught care of the house, heating 
and lighting, care of furniture, of stuffs, of linens, the art of washing 
and ironing. Cooking is most elaborately dealt with, and a host 
of other such things; bookkeeping as applied to the household, 12 
hygiene, and care of the injured in the minor accidents of life. 
Finally, there is the hygiene of the nursery, care of children, and 
again sewing and the making of garments. As for the scientific 
studies which occupy the rest of the time, I have read them with 
thankfulness that I am not a girl in an Ecole Normale. 
I shall speak of this further when we come to discuss the 
college life. Some college graduates do marry. I saw last year 
three unhappy men; two at least were gentlemen of unusual 
attainments. All married sweet girl graduates. None were rich 
men. All three were uncomfortable because their wives had no 
more idea of household management than they. One declared, 
in fact, that he had to run the house himself. His wife did know 
the romance literature, and was a fair Grecian. The wife of 
another found no interest in the care of an economical house, and 
said : “ Where was now the good of her mathematics : she had not 
time for them.” I could not tell her, nor could he. As a fact her 
lack of time was due to lack of knowledge. 
Of a hundred men of eighteen years, almost all will be fit to 
stand the trials of college work; of a hundred women far fewer. 
How many cannot I do not know. I have often stopped 
women who wished to go to college, thinking them physically 
unfit. It is very rare that I have to give a similar verdict as to 
young men. If 1 had my way, every college for man or woman 
should follow the example of Amherst: an entrance examina- 
tion as to physical conditions should be inexorable and complete. 
I should insist on records of height, weight and measurements. I 
should know thoroughly the condition of the functions, notably of 
the heart. I should learn all I could as to habits of mind and 
body. Above all, I should desire to know fully the state of the 
eyes. Many times have I seen people confess failure after a 
year of college life when it was because some slight, unguessed 
defect of vision was teasing the ganglia into states of permanent 
tire. The eyes do not suffer directly. The head aches, or is 
full, or feels queer, or gets tired. Generally it is the eyes which 
are then at fault. When all this is set down, and more besides, I 
should then put small groups of students in care of tutors, as is 13 
done at Johns Hopkins. These become health watchers, guardians, 
advisers as to conduct and studies. And for all pupils the hours 
of gymnastic work should, as at Amherst, be held to as strictly as 
the lecture or the recitation. 
You understand that I now speak of both sexes. I do not 
mean that because in man or woman the heart is unsound, or the 
eyes abnormal, or the general health below par, that such persons 
should be excluded. Far from it. I would shut out but a few. 
My plan would only insure that fore knowledge and after thought- 
fulness which make for success and prevent disaster. Indeed, 
the regular life of college for the student who accepts the rational 
consequences of imperfect physical conditions is often a source of 
improved health and not of disease. 
And now the student takes up the life of systematic study. 
What then ? How is she to get the best out of the training, and 
keep or better her physical health ? 
First of all, do not conclude that the whole mass of you can 
assume the man’s standard as to what you do in the way of 
mental labor. It will be at your peril. Some of you can. There 
are days for most of you when to use the mind persistently is 
full of danger. You are women, not men. She who forgets 
it is foolish; she who persistently and intentionally ignores it is 
worse. The debts of despised nature roll up with interest, and at 
last here is an inexorable creditor. Your very goodness betrays 
you. Women have terrible consciences and decline to waste time 
as so many young men do and have done ; this present preacher 
among them. Hence women at college work harder than men ; 
out of their eagerness arise disregard of physiological limitations, 
the tendency to shirk play and exercise for study, the cutting 
short of meal leisure, and the robbing of sleep to add to the hours 
of the day. 
I was asked to talk platitudes. I think I am coming up to your 
Dean’s requirements. 
You will say that at Wellesley, Bryn Mawr, Vassar, and else- 
where the rules prescribe hours of exercise. Careful teachers and 
even doctors watch over women at these colleges as nowhere are 14 
men so watched and cared for. I shall be told that at the colleges 
where the students live within the walls these mistakes cannot 
be made. I know better. The popular collegiate standard as 
to work is, or is wished to be, that of men. You make rules in 
vain ; opinion rules. Men break such laws, or have no physio- 
logical need of some of them. The man yearns for exercise; he 
gets it at all cost, and gets hunger with it. Women do not so 
eagerly crave it, and have their way. Nor can they violate the 
laws of health which are good for both sexes, and not suffer more, 
and longer, than men. Trust me, I am right. Do not try to be 
men when you are women. Keep your honest pride of sex. Be 
regular as to hours of sleep. Dismiss the day-work and do not lie 
thinking it over. If you are feeling your work, get a rest at dusk, 
and after the mid meal. Above all, be punctual at meals and do 
not take a book or the thought of work to table, or talk shop 
there. This is a first class platitude. 
I find in some women that afternoon tea is a serious evil. 
Girls go from one pleasant room to another, and by and by are 
really tea tipplers. Be careful as to this excess. 
There are certain symptoms which tell any watchful worker 
that something is wrong in the method or amount of his or her 
work. The brain-slave is beginning to rebel; you are tired at 
midday; you cannot get to sleep at night, or you wake too early, 
or are restless and wake and sleep, and wake again. Take care. 
These are Nature’s first signals of alarm. Stop and think—there 
is need. Do not delay and fight it out; get more rest. Shorten 
the work hours. Take milk or soup between meals and at bed 
time. If these simple helps fail, stop. Quit work. Get some 
physical labor. I would rather be a healthy waiting maid than 
Professor Minerva with a yellow skin and a lazy liver. There 
are times when if a tired woman does not lie abed and read a 
novel she is a goose, and will howl for it some day, if geese can 
howl. I have seen many, many breakdowns of college women, 
and always it was from being primarily unfit, or else it was from 
after disregard of wise regulations and the working too long 
when unfit for work. 15 
The mid-day meal is the one slighted. I recall a great naturalist 
who broke down and could work no more. I went with care over 
his habit of life. Craving time, he had given up eating lunch. A 
glass of porter, a chop or two at noon daily, cured him. You see 
even men can be foolish, and great men, too. 
As to exercise, if you are wise, get that regularly and with 
regard to personal peculiarities. Let it be what you like, the walk 
skating, bicycle (with a proper saddle), dumb bells (not too heavy), 
night and morning. I have known people, one great scholar, who 
found out that work was only possible if broken several times a 
day by exercise, short and smart, too. For him a brisk walk, 
before bed time was needed. Parkman, who was never strong, 
regulated his work by the sleep he got. If he slept well he worked 
longer. He went into his green-house and fussed with his flowers 
between every two hours of work, and you know what he did. 
My earnest belief in the need for this regular, sensible appreciation 
of personal defects and of what they ask is why I thus illustrate 
my proposition. Gauge yourselves. Accept frankly your disa- 
bilities, else you lose health or vigor, and then where is the good 
of it all. 
Also be careful the first year. You will gain every month if 
you do as 1 desire. 
Again there are times when, as at examinations, you will feel the 
anxieties and worries competitions engender. Take care; this is 
a season which presents me with emotional neurasthenics, with 
hysterical breakdowns in health. Even in childhood the examin- 
ation time furnishes an increase in the number of choreal cases. 
I rather incline to think that I would have no examinations, except 
the final one, in my ideal college ; perhaps not that. Examinations 
such as I hear of are cruel and destructive. 
As to methods of study I have a word to say and not an easy 
one. I must begin by an illustration which will not be without 
direct value. I want to speak of what, for lack of a better 
descriptive phrase, I must call tension. A clever woman wrote 
a bit of a book on this matter. It has good points, and much 
that is open to critical comment. Many people, when they walk 
keep their shoulders stiff, or in a state of needless tension. That 16 
means waste of force. If in chamber gymnastics a man lying 
flat lifts both legs in extension and slowly, he makes his neck and 
chest tense; but he may learn to do it without tension of muscles 
other than those below the chest. Other than this is waste. 
When some people write, they are apt to keep the neck stiff, and 
this again is useless employment of muscles not wanted for the 
purpose; or the hand is held stiffly; and out of this comes early 
fatigue, etc. Let this answer for all partial exercise. 
And now, to apply my illustration. When using the mind, get 
the body into easy positions, so as not to waste force. But this is 
not all. It is possible in study to use the mind so as not to put 
it in a state of needless tension. If a question seems unmanage- 
able, a little rest at ease often enables that mysterious instrument, 
the mind, to dispose of it readily, and in ordinary mental labor 
you may effect your purpose by excess of painful attention, or 
gain it by no more than is needed. I wish I could make this 
clearer. It is true, and easy to realize in act, though most hard 
to state in words. There can be a state of wasteful mental 
tension. 
Again, some think well afoot; some in repose. If I am troubled 
by a problem in science I must write it, to clear my head, and 
sometimes must write it over and over. The records remain and 
are helpful. 
Yet one word more. There is a quality of mind not directly 
cultivated in college life. It is the power of habitual and at last 
of almost automatic attention to minutiae. It is valuable and 
adds largely to the interest of out door-life. This wide awakeful- 
ness some have as a birthright, but any one may acquire it. 
The naturalist has it, but too often it is with him only applicable 
to technical uses, and brings no such enjoyment with it as any 
one who loves the works of the mighty artist, Nature, may get 
out of it. I have wondered in walking with young people to see 
how rare is this gift. It is a pretty mind-play to set out on a 
walk with the senses alert as to color, leaves, trees, trunks, stones, 
and general effects. If you can draw, that is good; it trains 
attention immensely. If not, always take a note book on your 17 
holidays and select bits, as small as you like, for observation and 
record. I call this “word-sketching.” I have not time to 
dwell upon it. 
In a volume of essays of mine called “ Doctor and Patient,” is a 
fuller account of it. This I hope you will look at. A book might 
well and pleasantly be written on this art of seeing and recording 
what else one trusts to memory, or never sees at all. I have 
dozens of books full of these word sketches. For folks who 
scribble, they are invaluable ; for others, they are useful, and in 
days to come interesting. They fix attention, teach minute obser- 
vation, are lessons in the value of words. Long, gentle effort to 
see with care at last results in automatic record of things to which 
at the time you did not actually attend. In natural study, in 
chemistry and physics to acquire this quality of mind is invalu- 
able, and in daily life it has its uses. In my own profession it is 
often of vast service, and yet few of my brethren have it. During 
active attention they see, hear, notice, and are led to think. 
During the inattentive state they cease to be wakened up by the 
presence of trifles, which of a sudden arouse in others every 
faculty. 
Most people waste their natural chances. These are they who 
read in cars daily. Never do that on short daily journeys. Use 
your eyes for a world of things too lightly regarded. I hope that 
you comprehend what I mean. The senses get sharp under such 
discipline, and become watchful sentinels. 
Perhaps I have not yet made clear that even sharp attention to 
see and hear well is not all of this matter. Attentive use of the 
senses is not in the truest sense observation. Learn to use the 
senses so that the new thing seen shall at once be made use of to 
recall like things, and lead to analogies and inferences. This is to 
observe, and is an essential of that training of which I spoke as the 
real object of education, which is, in fact, a useless business unless 
it teach dexterity of mind. 
I have just said that after years of such disciplined watchfulness 
the senses are never off duty, and here is an example. 
I stood in a French custom house last year. It was dimly 18 
lighted; we were weary with a two-hour waiting, and were walk- 
ing up and down. As we passed a certain point I smelt some- 
thing, felt I did not like it; then, memory acting, I knew what 
it was. I said, “Do you smell anything?” “Yes, I do, since 
you call attention to it.” “ Small pox,” said I. A lady’s maid 
apart on a bench was sitting alone. I caught a glimpse of her 
face as I looked, sat down, and after a question or two sent her 
home a bit scared, to get herself helped. You see, that although 
I was weary and inattentive, my nose was on guard. I know a 
very similar story of my father, and could tell you a dozen. 
Will you think it queer if I say a word as to dress from a man’s 
standpoint ? If you want to see ill-dressed people, the worst are 
women-doctors, platform ladies, college professors (men), and 
the folks generally who are over-valuers of learning. In the 
effort to dress the mind, I pray you not to forget the body. I 
never saw a professional woman who had not lost some charm. 
There comes a little hardness, less thought as to how prettily to 
do or say things ; affected plainness of dress; something goes. 
It seems to me a duty for men and women to seem as well 
as to be gracious in dress and manner. Are the women who 
become learned necessarily in peril of partial loss of what 
makes the social life agreeable? I do not know. American 
men are the worst dressed in the world, and I do not want to 
see our women fall away as to this because they are too intent 
on mere learning. As to all these matters I may be talking 
folly; I do think there are some such risks. 
And now as to your idle hours. Keep them sacred. Guard 
the seventh day as free from work. Cut off brain labor an hour 
before bedtime. Read verse then, or a novel. I do always, and 
have read every endurable one ever you heard of, and many not 
worth reading at all. A fine brain-clearer is a novel which cap- 
tures attention, and almost as good as a cold bath to sweep out 
the thoughts of the day. If you work in summer, let it be an hour 
or two after breakfast and no more. 
And here are some more platitudes for your Dean. In no 
college in this land is there care enough given as to the careful 19 
cultured use in talk and letters of our noble English tongue. 
Where are men or women ever taught to read aloud agreeably ? I 
see this lack among trained nurses, who have been first educated 
for teachers. Scarce one can read well. It is a delightful art, 
and for a nurse most useful; nor is it hard to acquire. I know a 
very remarkable preacher who now and then disturbes me by 
incorrect use of English, or by mispronounced words. I saw last 
year two not well-dressed women who had won honors, no matter 
where, in literature studies and what not,— chemistry, I think. 
They both made errors in grammar, and one had a voice like — 
my comparisons fail me. She knew the Elizabethan dramatists as 
I never shall, and corrected me as to the date of the death of the 
poet Duke Charles of Orleans. 
The French do better. First, last and always every educated 
French woman must know how to speak and write her own tongue 
with ease and grace. No matter what else she acquires or wants 
to learn, this demand is inexorable. For a woman to know Greek, 
Physics, Anglo-Saxon, Latin, Mathematics is all well, or may be, 
but I like to feel that what she has to say of them has the charm 
of a quiet voice with many tones, and the loveliness of distinct 
and simple English without provincial peculiarities, or those mys- 
terious inflections which at once betray want of breeding. 
It is not my desire to say here how English literature ought 
to be taught. I am sure however that there should be two 
chairs which do not now exist in the form I would have them 
to assume. First, literature for its charm. This is a chair of 
appreciation. It is meant to please and give happiness. The 
science of delight this would teach. I have said how I would 
conduct this study. 
My second chair would concern itself with what I may call 
the conventional literature of every day life, talk, reading aloud 
— even proof-reading — letters, notes. This last chair is greatly 
needed. I once heard a remarkable debate between students of 
two famous institutions. It was, as to matter, admirable; as to 
oratory, good; as to choice of language, notable. It was, save as 
to one man, sown with provincial forms of speech or pronunciation : 20 
Phuldelphy, umbarella, South Ca’lina, af’noon ; the “ ing ” merci- 
lessly cut off, the sound of “ wh ” lost, and so on. How easy to 
correct all this. 
Again, and this is for all Deans of women’s colleges. Why 
not teach the application of science to domestic life. A college 
graduate, and a clever one, too, was telling me once how complete 
was their drill in chemistry. I said, “Yes, and do they teach 
you why we boil rice ? ” She said any one knew that it was to 
make it soft. “ But how is this effected,” said I, “ and why ? ” 
How many of you know why the moth likes wool and not linen, 
or a host of such things which make housekeeping interesting and 
scientific ? And do you not need this knowledge ? The rule of 
thumb suffices you will say. But here we are on a higher plane, 
and should want to learn the science of the familiar. A lawyer 
at a law-school gets not alone the knowledge of how to conduct 
a case, but the great science which lies behind it and justifies its 
method and results. Is he the worse for that ? I think not. 
You ought to want to be reasonably learned, but you should as 
eagerly desire not to forget what makes life agreeable ; nor should 
you fail to keep touch of its practical aspects. 
Very learned folks run some risk of undervaluing what is 
outside of their own studies. This is what we mean when we say 
they are narrow minded. But the narrow who lose touch of the 
wide activities of life are uninteresting, and no one has a right 
to be uninteresting. 
If you take knowledge as a means of training, and of enjoyment 
for what it gives, and what it makes of you, how can you become 
uninteresting or contracted ? I hold that even Darwin would have 
been greater, and surely happier, had he not shrunken into a first 
rate scientific machine. When he ceased to care for Shakespeare 
I, for one, believe he put in peril qualities which the higher science 
cannot let slip and lose nothing. May I say in verse and as to 
this aspect of the matter what I think ? 21 
Unwise are they 
Who scorn the large relationship of life. 
Yon restless sea, the sky, the bird, the flower, 
The laugh of folly, and the ways of men, 
The woman’s smile, the hours of idleness, 
The court, the street, the busy market-place,— 
All that the skies can teach, the earth reveal,— 
Are wisdom’s bread. Alas ! the common world 
Hath lessons no philosophy can spare; 
The tree that ever spreads its leaves to heaven 
Casts equal anchors ’neath the soil below. 
You leave college, study medicine, teach, do this or that. An 
increasing number do none of these, and are more and more of 
the easy class. Here again for you are home, mother, father, 
sisters and brothers, duties, pleasures, cares. 
For many women, as for men, the learning won at college 
goes for nothing. With a man it has been a mind training for 
life work. For this class of women it is — shall I dare to say 
it—useless. The freedom of college life is gone. Here are 
restrictions, simple duties. The result is, and I have seen it 
over and over, discontent. The man goes out into a larger 
life; yours narrows to home functions. This is what I so much 
fear. I talk to a girl (and this is a true case) who says all the 
rest (sisters and brothers) are married or gone from home. She 
is alone with her parents, but her physics or her chemistry, which 
she loves, is wasted; after six months of ennui she worries 
her people into granting her permission to go on with her work. 
The two old people sit at home alone. It is this break in home 
life I dread; for the boy it is natural, for the daughter, no. 
A woman is born to a profession ; a man is not. 
And here, too, comes in the wild craving for what girls call a 
career, and if these women do or do not marry, the result is the 
same,— neglect of duty, ungratified ambitions, discontent; and 
so what was meant to make life fuller ends in lessening the 
sum of happiness. 
This is not always so; nor need it be. I am told that a smaller 
portion of college graduates marry than do women not so culti- 22 
vated. If this be true, there is something wrong; for surely 
the completeness of life for man or woman is in marriage. Is 
it that men do not like highly educated women ? Or is it that 
these fail to attract, not from this cause, but owing to some of 
the other reasons I have mentioned. Is it not true that some col- 
lege graduates are inclined to think of marriage as of a thing 
beneath them ? If so they have lost something of the naturalness 
of the truer life. 
One word before I close. You are here in competition with 
men. I do not like that. The professor expects of you virile 
standards of work and results; you are, therefore, as I think, 
in an atmosphere of peril, and unless you live as reason counsels, 
for some of you life here will leave you certain regrets. 
The exceptional successes and vigor of the rare few serve 
but to lure the mass of women into the belief that the continuity 
of work of the man can be imitated with no more risks than are 
his. Time, I know, will teach a larger wisdom in work. The 
higher education will, I trust, be more and more available. The 
college, the ideal college, will hereafter be a group of well regu- 
lated cottage homes. I am absolutely hostile to these bee-hive 
colleges for young women. I could tell you why I do not think 
this massing of young women wise or wholesome. I decline the 
task. I hope Radcliffe will never build this kind of a college. 
I hope it will say to its pupils more and more that life is not 
all mere learning of this or that tongue or science; that it will 
try to prevent disaster by due regulation of work, play, diet, 
exercise, and the inhibition of mind-labor when physiology and 
reason forbid it; but, come what may, the best of the higher 
evolution of mind will never safely be reached until the woman 
accepts the irrevocable decree which made her woman and not 
man. Something in between she cannot be. A club of men 
and women was proposed in London a few years ago. It was 
made up of the advanced women and of men. It was, in an 
unhappy moment, called “The Middlesex Club”; that killed it. 
I do not fancy a middle-sex; neither fish, flesh nor good red 
herring. 23 
I hope I have not been extreme or brutal. It is so easy to 
criticise, and yet I have said no word which is not the outcome of 
a rather sad experience of the disorders of women too ambitious 
to be thoughtful as to health, too eager to compete with men, to 
remember they are women. I see the wrecks come ashore to 
sail the seas of success no more. Is it any wonder I wish to 
warn those who are sailing or about to sail on treacherous seas ? 
I hope, my dear Dean, and you, ladies, that no wreck from 
these shores will be drifted into my dockyard. Sometimes I can 
refit the ruined craft. Alas! sometimes I cannot. I thank you, 
and leave you these reflections for what they are worth.