Pot-pourri from a Surrey garden

Some years ago I sympathised much and took great interest in the movement that tended towards the higher education of women. I still think that every door should be thrown open and every facility given, both as regards education and professional employment, to such women who have mind and strength for the competition. The great danger of over-educating young girls is that they are so much keener and work so much harder than boys ; and even if it does not injure their health, it very often unfits them for life, and makes them dissatisfied with their home and its surroundings. The great objection to the superficial education I recommend and believe to be so advantageous to the prosperous, is that it may degenerate into idleness and 332 POT-POURRI FROM A SURREY GARDEN frivolity in times of prosperity, and so prove an utter failure in times of adversity, and in the possibility of having to earn a livelihood later in life. I think most sensible young women of the present day feel the necessity of attaining a proficiency in some one direction, to which they could turn for help in the hour of need. Very often, however, the occupation that might best be turned to bread-winning is not the one to which girls are most addicted in their prosperity. In such a case, when money-making is not the object, they must make their own standard, and reach, if possible, a high order of proficiency ; for to take up any one thing, and then to do it badly, has a deteriorating effect upon the moral nature. The superficial beginning which, accord- ing to my theory, is conducive to largeness of mind, is a good preparation to later special training. The only other alternative, which is the worst of all, is if girls fold their hands and say they are not clever, and that they can do nothing. With patience and perseverance every girl can do something. Once a woman has made up her mind that she has to earn her living, no concentration of study for the one particular occupation she has in view can be too thorough or too severe. The essential requirement for bread- winning is that she should be able to do some one thing better than the generality of people with whom she is in competition. Now we come to the eternal and ever-discussed question, what young girls should read. I have no hesitation in saying that, taking the question all round, the safest, wisest, most sensible way out of the difficulty, is to let girls read from childhood anything they like. Never make a child come and ask, never forbid this book or that ; the moment you do, you get into a sea of hopeless difficulties. Where a girl is pure-minded, nothing will hurt her ; where she is not, the forbidding of one book DAUGHTERS 333 and allowing another raises a curiosity which will do far more harm than leaving it alone. All that is harmful in the Bible or Shakespeare is simply not understood. Why should it not be the same with other books? No one ever dreams of what they do not know. Dreams often distort and twist our knowledge ; no dream ever instructs us in anything of which we are ignorant.