CHAP. IV. SOLDIERS' HOME. 53 After a European literature, attracted both men and women prominent in various departments of thought and labour, and her hospitable home in palmy days was therefore the centre of many distinguished gatherings. The social amenities which make up so-called "society life" were unpleasant to her, and a severe manner was apt to be mistaken by strangers for want of sympathy, especially as this was combined with a somewhat aggressive adherence to her own opinions, and a tendency to ignore the possibility of any other view. She founded the Philosophical Society and Fortnightly Club, and was certainly a power in the circle she moved in. brief and pleasant stay at her house on Michigan Avenue, I was entertained by Mr. and Mrs. Fernando Jones, under whose kind auspices I visited everything of interest in the city, including an institution about 100 miles away from it, viz., the Home for Disabled Soldiers at Milwaukee. We were escorted there by General Osborne, who materially aided in achieving the one victory ever gained over the redoubtable Stonewall Jackson, and shared with General Sheridan the honour of receiving one of the two pistols. awarded to the "bravest generals in the Union Army." As one of the managers of the National Asylums, established on the contributions of "bounty jumpers" and the fines of deserters, General Osborne invited me to see the Wisconsin Home, where deserving soldiers are cared for at the expense of bad ones. After a pleasant dinner at the Governor's, we were taken to the Institution itself, and received by the officers and their wives, who accompanied us through the building the library and reading-rooms, lecture and concert hall, post and telegraph office, and hospital ward, with its excellent staff of nurses, until we reached the workshops, where those who desire it can learn any kind of trade. At five o'clock the bugle sounded, and 600 soldiers assembled in the concert-hall. I was conducted to the platform by the Governor, General Osborne, and Colonel Ludwicke, and the inevitable speeches occupied at least an hour. At the conclusion of this part of the entertainment the soldiers, at the Governor's invitation, sent a most "enthusiastic greeting" to the British Army, accompanied by deafening cheers. How I was to convey it I never knew. But I thoroughly understood what it meant, and the constant expressions of devotion to the old country which are heard throughout the States cannot fail to awaken the traveller's cordial response. The fervid words of the American poet simply express the widespread sentiment of his countrymen, and must certainly find an echo in every manly English breast: "Britons-in hope and creed, In blood and tongue our brothers; We too are heirs of Runnymede, And Shakespeare's fame and Cromwell's deed Are not alone the mother's! "Thicker than water,'-in one rill, Through centuries of story, Our Saxon blood has flowed, and still “Joint-heirs and kinsfolk, leagues of wave The gift of saints and martyrs. CHAP. IV. FEELING OF KINSHIP. "Our very sins and sorrows teach We carp at faults with bitter speech, 55 In spite of recent drastic comments, which have naturally excited some resentment in the breasts of our American cousins, even Sir Lepel Griffin owns that they are indeed "bone of our bone;" and he recognises that when the united Anglo-Saxon race, disdaining all possible occasion of quarrel, joins hands across the Atlantic, "the peace and progress of the world will be insured." Whether such utterances as are to be found elsewhere in Sir Lepel's book are likely to "cement this lasting alliance" is perhaps another question, but it is satisfactory to note that an Englishman who has discovered so many faults in "the Great Republic" frankly acknowledges that the position "in which Americans have placed their women is the best guarantee that the nation will outgrow the blemishes" he now complains of, and "will in the future attain a higher civilisation than has been enjoyed by any people who have regarded their intellectual and political life as the undivided dominion of man." CHAPTER V. A visit to the University of Michigan-President Angel-Andrew White of Cornell-Professor Coit Tyler-Kansas State University-Chancellor Lippincott-Discussion about co-education-Columbia College -Rev. Dr. Dix and Professor Drisler-Consequences of higher education on health-Views of Frances Power Cobbe, George MacDonald, Mrs. Joseph Choate, President Barnard-Rise and progress of the movement in England-Miss Dawes, the first Master of Arts in the London University—Mrs. Lucy Mitchell. THE University of Michigan, which through State aid offers its privileges to all persons of either sex who are qualified for admission, was naturally an object of considerable interest to me. Here I was told that while the question of coeducation was being discussed in the Eastern States it had been practically settled in the West. At the President's house at Ann Arbour I had the pleasure of meeting Andrew White, then President of Cornell, and I heard him lecture on "The Battlefields of Science," describing the opposition which had been encountered in every period of history from superstition and fanaticism.. The following day Professor Coit Tyler took me over the University, which is organised in three departments-literature, science, and arts; medicine and surgery; and law. I saw the women students attending all classes save the medical; here they have separate lectures and clinical demonstrations. One of these I attended personally, and CHAP. V. KANSAS STATE UNIVERSITY. 57 when it concluded the sixty women left the room, and in another moment their places were filled by men, who listened to the same lecture we heard, accompanied by the same illustrations. "Far from injuring the scholarship here," remarked one of the graduates, "they are, by their earnestness and fidelity, stimulating it; their presence is beginning to give class-room conversation that delicate, chaste, and humane tone which the recognition of women among the readers of books has been giving to English literature during the last hundred years." The President assured me that none of the ladies had found the curriculum too heavy for their physical endurance, adding emphatically," any woman who can endure the strain that modern dress and modern society make upon her, can certainly endure any college course of instruction." The same testimony was afforded by President White of Cornell, who declared it would be difficult to find women in better health than those at Cornell, and that "the effect of study was far less disastrous than frivolous, aimless lives." President Warren, of the Boston University, has also recently stated that he could not recall a single instance in nine years of a girl's health giving way from overwork. When I visited the Kansas State University last March (1884), the Chancellor spoke in the strongest terms about the success of the movement there, claiming that the co-education scheme having been carried in the Legislature of 1864, Kansas deserves the credit of being the first State in the Union to adopt it. "A kindlier and more courteous spirit has marked all the students, the roughness and brutality known in so many Eastern colleges have never appeared here, and in seventeen years of the most radical |