The best-known girls’ colleges in the United States are situated in the country, and the opportunity thus given for sport and for a healthy appreciation of nature is an invaluable asset for those institutions. At no time in life is the love of beauty at once so delicate and so keen as in those years when one is eligible to college life. To foster this perhaps latent appreciation by a direct contact with the beauties of nature is one of the opportunities offered by Bryn Mawr, Vassar, Wellesley, Smith and other well-known women’s colleges.
The three or four years in college among a hundred or more other girls often form one of the happiest and most fruitful periods of a girl’s life. She makes interesting and valuable friendships. Often her knowledge of the world is broadened by visits paid to her schoolmates in vacation time. The advantages she derives from properly directed study are great; the advantages in other directions are possibly even greater. A women’s college is a little world in which every variety of femininity may be observed. The life there gives opportunity for the development of the most diverse talents. Any sort of capability eventually finds scope for action in college life. The serious side and the recreative side of life find expression there. A girl who lends herself freely to the opportunities of a college should quit its doors prepared for social and domestic life and able also to take care of herself financially if exigencies require.
The comparative cost of college and boarding-school is often an important point in the matter of deciding a girl’s educational destination. The best boarding-schools are more expensive than the colleges as far as formal expenditure is concerned. A girl’s personal expenses, though they are regulated in some boarding-schools, are in college and at most boarding-schools what she and the family council choose to make them.
If college and boarding-school exercise a beneficial influence upon the development of a girl’s mind and manners, travel is a happy third in the list. Unfortunately travel is an expensive luxury. If, however, the financial circumstances of a girl’s parents are such that she may travel for six months or a year after her schooling is over, this puts the finishing touch upon her educational opportunities. Travel is the easiest, the quickest and the most delightful manner of gaining knowledge in the world, while, at the same time, it is what study is not always, an encouragement to social facility.