Oak Street 
 UNCLASSIFIED 
 
 Volume 
 
 JULY, 19 IS Number 4 
 
 Published by Randolph-Macon Woman's College 
 Issued Quarterly 
 
 BULLETIN OF 
 
 RANDOLPH - MACON 
 WOMAN'S COLLEGE 
 
 LYNCHBURG, VA. 
 
 THE SOUTHERN WOMAN: PAST AND PRESENT 
 
 BY 
 
 Edwin Mims 
 Professor of English y VanJerbilt Un't<versity 
 
 rOFiU 
 
 Entered as second-class matter, January 5, 1915, at the post-office at Lynchhurg, 
 Virginia, under the Act of August 24, 1912. 
 
BULLETIN 
 
 OF 
 
 Randolph-Macon 
 WOMAN'S College 
 
 THE SOUTHERN WOMAN: PAST AND PRESENT 
 
 BY 
 
 Edwin Mims 
 Projessor of English^ Vanderbilt Uni-versity 
 
 Published by Randolph- Nf aeon Woman's College 
 Lynchburg, Va. 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2013 
 
 http://archive.org/details/southernwomanpasOOmims 
 
The Southern Woman: Past and Present* 
 
 By Edwin Mims 
 Professor of English, Vanderbilt University 
 
 MR. DOOLEY once remarked that in his youth he 
 wrote a book about Woman; but when in maturer 
 life he came to publish it he added at the end what 
 the scientists call Errata, in which he requested his 
 readers, wherever in its pages they found "is," to substitute "is 
 not," and wherever they found "is not," to substitute "may be," 
 "perhaps," or "God knows." With due recognition of the dangers 
 of writing or speaking about the eternal woman question as sug- 
 gested in this remark of our American humorist, and with due 
 apology to the members of the graduating class, who are doubt- 
 less much better informed than the speaker, I purpose to discuss 
 with you the Southern Woman : Past and Present. I shall en- 
 deavor to steer clear of the many delicate and troublesome 
 questions involved in the feminist movement, and rather to sug- 
 gest in concrete form and with the aid of our recent Southern 
 literature some of the most pronounced types of womanhood. 
 Whatever may be lacking in the way of abstract generalizations 
 may be compensated for, I trust, in the concrete types presented 
 for your consideration. 
 
 If there is one thing upon which Southern people have prided 
 themselves, it is their reverence for womanhood. Long after 
 Burke had pathetically lamented the passing of the age of chiv- 
 alry in Europe, we maintained the outward form and the inward 
 spirit of chivalry — in our ante-bellum social life and more es- 
 pecially in our chivalric attitude towards the gentler sex. In 
 the stories and novels of Mr. Thomas Nelson Page we have pre- 
 served, for our generation at least, the women of the old regime. 
 It is easy to see that the author idealizes his heroines, but that 
 is a fault scarcely to be wondered at in one so enamored of the 
 Old South. One is apt to smile at his "lily-fingered, pink-faced, 
 
 ♦Delivered as the Commencement Address at Randolph-Macon Woman's 
 College, June 1, 1915. 
 
4 Bulletin 
 
 laughing girl with teeth like pearls and eyes like stars," or his 
 creatures of "peach-bloom and snow, languid, delicate, saucy." 
 And yet who can resist the charm of Polly, the light-hearted, 
 tender creature, or of "Miss Charlotte" coming down the grand 
 stairway looking like "she done come down right from de top o' 
 de blue sky and bring a piece on it wid her," or Meh Lady in her 
 bridal dress, "white as snow from her head to way back down 
 on de flo' behind her, an' her veil done fall roun' her like white 
 mist, an' some roses in her hair," or Margaret Landon, dressed 
 in a curious rich old flowered silk which she had found in one of 
 her grandmother's trunks, "looking as if she had just stepped out 
 of an old picture?" In such sketches we have the inexpressible 
 Southern girl, "with her fine grain, silken hair, her satin skin, 
 her musical speech." 
 
 She in time became the dignified matron of the plantation, "the 
 gentle, classic, serious mother among her tall sons and radiant 
 daughters." She was mistress, manager, doctor, nurse, counselor, 
 seamstress, teacher, housekeeper, slave, all at once — "the key- 
 stone of the domestic economy which bound all the rest of the 
 structure and gave it its strength and beauty." Face to face with 
 the hardships and privations of war, she was patriotic, resource- 
 ful, courageous. We associate such women, young and old, with 
 stately columns and porticos, polished halls, family portraits, 
 immemorial trees, and a social life notable for its charm and 
 courtesy. 
 
 A later writer born in another section of the country, the 
 author of "Lady Baltimore," has portrayed in fascinating lan- 
 guage the same type of woman with a different background — that 
 of Charleston, "the most lovely, the most wistful town in America ; 
 whose visible sadness and distinction seems also to speak audibly, 
 speak in the sound of the quiet waves that ripple around her 
 Southern front, speak in the church bells on Sunday morning, 
 and Ijreathe not only in the soft salt air, hul in the perfume of 
 every gentle, old-fashioned rose that blooms behind the high 
 garden wall of falling, mellow-tinted plaster; King's Port, the 
 retrospective, King's Port, the 1)elatcd, who from her pensive 
 porticos looks over her two rivers to the marshes and the trees 
 
Randolph-Macon Woman's College 5 
 
 beyond the live oaks, veiled in gray moss, brooding with mem- 
 ories !" Here lived a handful of people who were like that great 
 society of the world, "the high society of distinguished men and 
 women who exist no more." The charm of these women was 
 like the charm of some sweet old melody — "a reflection of the old 
 serene candlelight we all once talked and danced in." "If they 
 seemed to me," says Mr. Wister, "as narrow as those streets, they 
 also seem to me as lovely as those serene gardens ; and if I had 
 smiled at their prejudices, I had loved their innocence, their deep 
 innocence, of the poisoned age which had succeeded their own." 
 In the women of Mr. Page and Mr. Wister, we of the present 
 generation realize to some extent the aristocratic type of the 
 ante-bellum South in country and in city. In striking contrast 
 with these women were those of what we should call to-day the 
 middle class. Far more than we have sometimes thought, there 
 was a democratic element in the ante-bellum South. Small plan- 
 tations and villages constituted the background of a distinctly 
 different type of civilization from that of Virginia or South 
 Carolina. I speak of the women who were the mothers and grand- 
 mothers of many of us — plain, pious, energetic, and resourceful. 
 They were the Methodists and Baptists and Presbyterians of 
 somewhat primitive days. They took part in what Mrs. Corra 
 Harris has designated in her "Circuit Rider's Wife" "the candle- 
 lit drama of salvation." Except in this novel, the hero of which 
 is the old-time circuit rider, this type of woman has not found 
 adequate expression in written words. Her face comes to us 
 not in splendid portraits, but in faded deguerreotypes or crude 
 photographs, but she lives in our hearts and memories. Her 
 interests were centered in the home and in the church; she read 
 but one book, the Bible, or perchance "Mother, Home and 
 Heaven"; she had but little education, but she was a familiar 
 figure at camp-meetings or in the small churches, which were 
 like beacon lights in pioneer communities. Lacking the charm 
 of the social life which we have just suggested, she had in her 
 home the prophet's chamber in which the messenger of God was 
 always welcome. Such a woman Tennyson had in mind when 
 he wrote of the sister of Lazarus : 
 
Bulletin 
 
 "Her eyes are homes of silent prayer. 
 
 Thrice blest whose lives are faithful prayers, 
 Whose loves in higher love endure. 
 
 Oh, sacred be the flesh and blood 
 To which she links a truth divine !" 
 
 And we may repeat the poet's warning, too : 
 
 "See thou, that countest reason ripe 
 
 In holding by the law within, 
 
 Thou fail not in a world of sin. 
 And ev'n for want of such a type." 
 
 Whatever may come to us in this new age in which we live, we 
 should not lose out of our minds and hearts the memories and 
 traditions that are associated with these two types of Southern 
 womanhood. Whatever new ideals may be suggested to us, we 
 shall do well to estimate at their proper value the social charm 
 and the pious devotion which come to us from a former genera- 
 tion. And yet we should not make the mistake of idealizing a 
 former state of society at the expense of our own. Neither the 
 charm of the romancer, nor the haze through which we see the 
 past, should cause us to idealize the past. The ante-bellum South 
 was not the golden age. Side by side with these two types we 
 must place two who were, in a sense, the victims of the old order. 
 Mr. Walter H. Page, our present Ambassador to England, in a 
 memorable address has pointed out what he calls "The Forgotten 
 Woman" of the South : ''Both the aristocratic and the ecclesi- 
 astical systems made provision for the women of special classes — 
 the fortunately born and the religious well-to-do. But all the other 
 women were forgotten. Let any man whose mind is not hard- 
 ened by some worn-out theory of politics or of ecclesiasticism go 
 to the country in almost any part of the State (North Carolina) — 
 to make a study of the life of the women. He will sec them 
 thin anrl wrinkled in youth from ill-prej)ared food, clad without 
 warmth or grace, living in untidy houses, working from daylight 
 till bcfllimc at the dull round of weary duties, the slaves of men of 
 equal slovenliness, the mothers of joyless children — all uneducated 
 if not illiterate. Yet even this condition were endurable if there 
 were any hope, but this type of woman is encrusted in a shell of 
 
Randolph-Macon Woman's College 7 
 
 dull content with her lot ; she knows no better and can never learn 
 better, nor point her children to a higher life. Some men who 
 are born under these conditions escape from them; a man may 
 go away, go where life offers opportunities, but the women are 
 forever helpless." 
 
 A Virginia novelist, Miss Ellen Glasgow, in her "A Voice of 
 the People," portrays such a type in the mother of Aaron Burr, 
 "worn by hardness, crippled by poverty, embittered by sorrow." 
 In a moment of bitterness at the sordid tragedy of her life she 
 says, "Its goin' on ten years since I have stopped to draw breath, 
 and I am clean wore out. 'Taint no better than a dog's life, 
 nohow — a woman and a dog air about the only creatures as would 
 put up with it, and they're the biggest pair of fools the Lord 
 ever made. I have had a hard life and it warn't fair." Such a 
 figure is the sad commentary upon a vanished social order in the 
 light of our present democratic ideals, and by its contrast is the 
 prophecy of a new day in which all classes are being brought 
 within the range of education and culture. The same author has 
 portrayed in "The Deliverance" the daughter of an overseer who 
 rises from the soil with all its coarseness to unexpected heights 
 of culture and refinement — fitted in every way to become the wife 
 of a descendant of the old cavaliers. In his bitterness this man 
 had denied the possibility of such development in the common 
 people, but in his enlarged manhood he realizes the possiblities of 
 human nature under any and all circumstances. He is finally 
 delivered from the feeling of caste. 
 
 There is another type scarcely less poignant in its tragedy than 
 this of the forgotten woman. She was found even in the most 
 aristocratic circles — one who never realized herself by reason of 
 the limitations of the social life by which she was surrounded. 
 Again we have recourse to Miss Glasgow, who, though lacking 
 perhaps the charm of some of the earlier story writers of the 
 South, has brought to fiction a mind singularly gifted in portraying 
 and interpreting social tendencies. In "The Miller of the Old 
 Church" she presents us with the character of an old maid who 
 in her youth had had a yearning for art and a desire to study 
 abroad, but whose ambitions had been thwarted by the ideals of 
 
8 Bulletin 
 
 womanhood that prevailed in her family. "Generations of ances- 
 try had bred in her the belief that woman existed only to win love 
 or bestow it. Since in the eyes of her generation any self-expres- 
 sion from a woman, which was not associated with sex, was an 
 affront to convention, that single gift of hers was doomed to 
 wither away in the hot-house air that surrounded her. She had 
 pulled in vain at the obstinate tendrils that held her to the spot 
 in which she had grown. Why on earth should a girl want to go 
 streaking across the water to study art, when she had a home she 
 could stay in and men folks who could look after her." 
 
 Here again, then, we have an indictment of the old order from 
 another standpoint. Essentially, however, it is but the presenta- 
 tion of the ideals of democracy from another point of view. For 
 democracy is not merely a form of government, it is a state of 
 society in which all roads are open to talent, in which all types 
 of people may find a realization of their powers. We have often 
 spoken of the democracy of the New South from the standpoint 
 of men and of races, but we have not yet seen with some intelli- 
 gent women that it is also a most vital question in the life of our 
 women. In making this statement I do not refer to the right of 
 suffrage — for that is far too delicate a question for me to enter 
 upon on this occasion and in this presence. But the right of 
 women to realize themselves, to find opportunities for self-ex- 
 pression outside of the bounds of our conventional social ideals 
 is a fundamental one. 
 
 How some women have struggled against these ideals, crys- 
 tallized in definite formulae and conventions, is thoughtfully, 
 though not artistically, presented in Miss Mary Johnston's 
 **Hagar," where we have a brilliant and somewhat eccentric 
 young woman struggling against the society in which she moves. 
 She is told by everyone that woman's place is the home ; **and we 
 can surely trust everything to the chivalry of our Southern men." 
 Her irritable and obstinate grandfather — a somewhat typical 
 Southern colonel — exclaims in passionate indignation at the new 
 shibboleths of women and at modern society in general : "People 
 defying their betters, women deserting their natural sphere, 
 atheists denying hell and saying that the world wasn't made in 
 
Randolph-Macon Woman's College 9 
 
 six days, young girls talking about independence and their own 
 lives! Their own lives! Ha!" When Hagar reads Darwin and 
 Shelley and Ibsen, her grandmother says, "I don't pretend to be 
 literary or to understand literary talk. What Moses and St. 
 Paul said and the way we have done always in Old Virginia is 
 good enough for me. You are perverse and rebellious. It is 
 against the Bible." Unable to subdue the mind of the young 
 rebel, her guardians turn her over to an old-fashioned boarding 
 school for girls. To its presiding genius is committed the guar- 
 dianship of the young female mind, *'of the safe and elegant paths 
 into which she guided it," and she has the gift for "preserving dew 
 and bloom and ignorance of evil in her interesting charges." 
 This teacher is horrified that one girl is to be a nurse, another to 
 be a journalist, and exclaims : "One of those girls has a brother 
 and the other a father quite able to support them. Women 
 working for their living !" To a passionate lover who insists that 
 she must just be her beautiful self and keep on loving him, Hagar 
 exclaims, "Well, I am real too. I am as real as you are." At the 
 end of the story when she has at last found opportunity for com- 
 plete self-realization, she sums up her struggle with all the forces 
 about her in these words : "I had to think away from concepts 
 with which the atmosphere was saturated. I had to think away 
 from creeds and dogmas and affirmations made for me by my 
 ancestors — the idea of a sacrosanct Past and the virtue of Im- 
 mobility. I had to strike away from Sanctions and Authority 
 and Taboos and Divine Rights." 
 
 In a much more artistic form and with a point of view that is 
 more comprehensive and more discriminating, Mr. Henry Sydnor 
 Harrison has presented us with abundant material for studying 
 the Southern woman of the present day. When we read Mr. 
 Page's stories we feel at the end that the curtain falls and that 
 there is no future worth while. When we read "Queed" and 
 "V. V.'s Eyes," we feel that we are watching our contemporary 
 life in a period of transition to something better, and that in 
 this changing order women are playing a most vital part. They 
 respond to the call of a new day. Alarmed with many superfi- 
 cial manifestations of the new spirit, such as women's clubs 
 
10 Bulletin 
 
 and charity organizations, which to many are but new opportunities 
 of social triumphs, young women, poor and rich aHke, grow sick 
 of years lived without serious purpose waiting for husband and 
 children which sometimes never come; "sick of their dependence, 
 of their idleness, of their careful segregation from the currents 
 of life about them." "They weary, in short, of their position of 
 inferior human worth, under that glittering cover of fiction which 
 looks so wholly noble till you stop to think." In a word, there 
 comes ''the revolt of women against chivalry, in chivalry's old 
 home and seat.'' In spite of all solemn plausibilities and humor- 
 ous jibes, women are coming to play a part in civic improvements, 
 social progress, united charities, the scientific treatment of disease, 
 and even to take their part in political life. Mrs. Page, a charm- 
 ing type of the old South, feels that her life might have been dif- 
 ferent if she had lived in a different social order from that of her 
 youth. "I wasn't trained to express myself that way ; that was all 
 ironed down flat in me. I never had any education, except what 
 was superficial-showy. I was never taught to think." 
 
 Mr. Harrison's finest character in "Queed" is "Sharlee" Wey- 
 land, the assistant secretary of the state department of charity — 
 a Southern girl, the descendant of one of the best families of 
 Virginia, who has to act as stenographer, clerk, and office boy 
 because of the reduced circumstances of her family. She has 
 all the charm of one of Thomas Nelson Page's heroines — the sort 
 that "old ladies stop and watch." There was nothing in the 
 least businesslike, officious, or stenographic in her manner. If 
 her head bulged with facts about the treatment of deficient 
 classes, no hint of that appeared in her talk at parties where she 
 was the queen of dancers and the cynosure of all eyes. But she 
 has something that the proverbial girl does not have — she has 
 ideas, a certain Inisinesslike sagacity, and a high social purpose. 
 To her aunt who, though keeping a boarding house, will not dun 
 her boarders, she says : "I am not well bred. I am bold, blunt, 
 brazen, I am forward. I am resolute and grim. In short I belong 
 to the younger generation which you despise so." To her mother, 
 wbo resents her association with those who have not the distinc- 
 tion of birth and breeding, she says "I am a Democrat." And 
 
Randolph-Macon Woman's College ii 
 
 her mother repHes, "That's what no lady ought to be." In her 
 official position and as a woman of conviction, she gives herself 
 to the work of establishing a reformatory for girls, and has 
 visions of many other public institutions which her native state 
 has need of. In the end she marries Queed, but her life of 
 quickened social interest has not been in vain. 
 
 To her eccentric lover she speaks words that sum up our 
 present era in the South : "Heigho ! we are living in an interest- 
 ing time, you and I. It isn't every generation that can watch 
 its old town change into a metropolis right under its eyes. You 
 say that you are an evolutionary sociologist. Yet a wonderful 
 demonstration in social evolution is going on all round you, and 
 you don't even know it. On the one side there are Colonel Cowes 
 and my grandmother. On the other there are our splendid young 
 men, men who, with conditions of leisure and cultured idleness 
 in their blood, have pitched in with their hands and heads to make 
 this state hum. On the one side there is the old slave-holding 
 aristocracy; on the other the finest democracy in the world. A 
 real sociologist would be absorbed in watching this marvelous 
 process; social evolution actually surprised in our workshop. A 
 tremendous social drama is being acted out under your very win- 
 dozv and you yawn and pull dozsm the blinds" 
 
 I could wish that these words might sink deep into your minds, 
 for they describe for you the world in which you live. To under- 
 stand the Present South is one of the supreme duties that devolve 
 upon young women that graduate from such institutions as this. 
 The South of to-day is a section in which industrialism, science. 
 Democracy, and nationalism are dominant forces. You may 
 lament the passing of the old order, but you cannot escape from 
 the present generation if you would. The easy thing is to dream 
 of a golden age that never was, or of a golden age that lies ahead 
 in the mystic years of the future. The difficult thing is to under- 
 stand your own age, to master its language. Cherishing all that 
 is best in the past, you will help the present generation to lift our 
 civilization a bit higher. I know of nothing more futile than for 
 people to rail against their own age. Let the old do so, but we 
 of the present age, we who have the blood of youth coursing 
 
12 Bulletin 
 
 through our veins, must meet the challenge of a difficult situation. 
 We shall be neither hopeless conservatives nor extreme radicals, 
 but progressive conservatives. We shall be neither swift, nor 
 slow, to change. There is not a single force in our present life 
 that may not be fraught with great danger, not a change is taking 
 place that may not be for the worse — that is one side of the truth. 
 It is equally true that there is not a single force that may not be 
 used to advantage by wise men and women of the present genera- 
 tion. To see to it that we as individuals and that our communi- 
 ties and commonwealths may share all the results of an advanc- 
 ing civilization in such a way as not to destroy the unity of our 
 history and not to lose the strength and the charm of the past, 
 is our supreme duty. 
 
 And now may I interpret some of these general ideas in the 
 light of your own life? You of the graduating class especially 
 are thinking to-day of what you are to do in future years. No 
 general talk about the age or the section in which you live should 
 obscure your own individual life — in the secret recesses of your 
 own soul you must work out your destiny. 
 
 It is reasonable to take for granted that the great majority of 
 you will marry. You have already thought in terms of home 
 life and are reasonably sure that you will some day realize your 
 dreams. For the next two or three years you will doubtless enter 
 what we call, for lack of a better term, society. You will be the 
 debutantes of the coming season in your various communities. 
 Some of you, I fear, will become the victims of society, the 
 creatures of fashion. Angela's Business — the subject of Mr. 
 Harrison's most recent novel — may become your business — to be 
 seen of men and to be loved of men. Corra Harris's "In Search 
 of a Husband" — so bitterly resented by some men and women — 
 may after all be the story of your life, and even the insolent 
 philosophy of Bernard Shaw's ''Man and Super-Man" may be the 
 unconscious philosophy of your life. You will wait as the spider 
 waits for the fly — motionless ; but you will get him ! God forbid 
 that you should ever be a social creature of the type described by 
 John (jalsworthy : "Taught to believe that life consists in caring 
 for your clean, well-nourished body — taught to feel that your only 
 business is to know the next thing that you want and get it 
 
Randolph-Macon Woman's College 13 
 
 given you. . . your heart a stagnant pool that never sees the sun. 
 You will have everything — theater, opera, books, music, travel, 
 and religion — and yet be blind in heart and soul and voice and 
 walk. . . The Forces are proud of you, their waxen, scentless 
 flower. A soul that was born in you a bird; wings gone, eyes 
 gone. The most tragic figure in the world — the Figure without 
 Eyes. You are as dead as the snow around the crater of a burnt- 
 out volcano." 
 
 When after a social career you choose your husband — or have 
 him chosen for you — you may continue the career of your social 
 conquests and play at social precedence with your neighbors. 
 Wealth may bring to you a house rather than a home. In your 
 irresponsibility and conventionality, you may reproduce without 
 knowing it the tragedy of Nora in Ibsen's "A Doll's House." It 
 makes one shudder to think of the gayety, the frivolity, the stu- 
 pidity of much of the social life of to-day. Mrs. Wharton's "The 
 House of Mirth," with its delicate irony, is a story reproduced 
 in many social circles. As one who does not agree with the ex- 
 treme position taken by many godly people with regard to worldly 
 amusements, I cannot but protest in the name of righteousness 
 and even of good sense at the abuses to which many people carry 
 them. Nothing too hard can be said about people who, especially 
 at this time of strain and stress throughout the world, are living 
 their lives in utter disregard of laws of health, of science, and 
 even of decency. It is no wonder that many who live in our 
 Southern cities, face to face with the increasing wealth and lux- 
 ury of this day, have turned longingly back to the social ideals 
 of a former generation. 
 
 And yet I cannot believe that many of the graduates of this 
 noble institution will follow the career that I have just outlined. 
 As young women you will continue to grow in the life of culture 
 and of goodness. If you have loved books here, you will continue 
 to love them, and the passing years will see you developing an ever 
 surer taste for what is excellent in literature and art. Your 
 ideals will have spreading power. You will be keepers of the 
 light. When you marry, you will have homes instead of houses. 
 You will preserve the best traditions of the home-life of the 
 
14 Bulletin 
 
 Southern people, while at the same time you will take full ad- 
 vantage of the teachings of modern science and of the comforts of 
 modern life. You will keep the sky-light open that God may 
 enter. 
 
 A few days ago I rode with some friends out Harding Road 
 from Nashville. It is the old road to "Belle Meade," which was 
 one of the most magnificent of ante-bellum estates — one of those 
 places which still suggest to us the social life of which I spoke at 
 the beginning of this address. All along the road now are splendid 
 houses which the well-to-do people of Nashville have built, with 
 the background of the hills and valleys of middle Tennessee. I 
 knew enough about the people to distinguish between houses and 
 real homes. Some of the dwellings were the result of an architect's 
 taste, and the lawns were planned by landscape architects, and 
 neither represented the taste of the men and women who owned 
 them; some of their libraries had books in them which are only 
 a species of furniture — editions de luxe which are never read; 
 some of them had pianos from which came no melody. I knew 
 of skeletons in their closets and of shadows on the threshold. 
 They were ''Houses of Mirth." 
 
 In contrast with these were others that were real homes — and 
 one especially — a. house of an Elizabethan type, first dreamed and 
 then planned by those who had traveled in England. Around 
 it were thirty acres of monumental oaks, gardens — vegetable and 
 rose — and pasture lands for sheep. I recalled that it is the custom 
 of the inmates to entertain upon the lawn parties of friends from 
 the city; one could think of England with its afternoon tea- 
 parties. Here are entertained literary clubs of the city, all of 
 whom feel it a rare privilege to breathe for a while the atmos- 
 phere of such a place. The library, the slow accretion of years, 
 with books well-marked and well-used, is the best indication of 
 real literary taste. All these — house, and lawn, and gardens — are 
 but an outward expression of the soul of the man and woman 
 who have made this haunt of ancient peace. The father, now 
 one of the most prominent lawyers of the city, was the honor 
 man of his class at the University, and has kept in later years the 
 intellectual habits of his youth. The mother, a social leader in 
 
Randolph-Macon Woman's College 15 
 
 her younger days, loved a poor man in whom she believed. After 
 a period of struggle and mutual co-operation, they have realized 
 in this home the dreams of years. They have four children — one 
 of them now at the University and one of the leaders of his class, 
 the others in preparatory schools known for their modesty and 
 scholarship. Father and mother move in the best circles of social 
 life and are like a benediction to all who know them — the masters 
 and not the slaves of social customs. 
 
 If then you do what most women ought to do, you will find in 
 such a life as is suggested here the fullest opportunity for the 
 exercise of all the powers that you can command. The art of 
 home-making is the most difficult of all arts to master. Beside 
 this delicate and complex art, the ordinary profession of a man 
 appears simple. Accepted as a conventional form of life, mar- 
 riage is the most futuile of all careers; but taken as a sacred 
 challenge to apply all that is best in science, in literature, in art, 
 and in religion, to the making of a real home which shall be a 
 link between the generations that have been and are to be, it is the 
 noblest of all careers. 
 
 There are some of you, however, who, in all human probability, 
 will not marry, and it is to you that I wish to speak briefly in my 
 concluding remarks. I know of nothing more tragic than that 
 of a young woman or a middle-aged woman who, disappointed in 
 her expectation of marriage, has no definite purpose for her life. 
 There is no reason why anybody in this day and time should fail 
 to find an opportunity for creative work of the highest kind. If 
 you have caught clearly the purport of some of the novels sug- 
 gested by me, you realize to some extent that the modern world 
 brings to each of you a chance for self-realization. Don't be 
 afraid, or ashamed to be, a "Permanent Spinster." Thank God 
 that you do not have to marry unless Love demands it, and that 
 you may find careers of usefulness all about you ! 
 
 I can but suggest some of the lines of work that loom large on 
 our horizon to-day. I trust that some of you will continue your 
 studies in the colleges and universities of this country or of 
 Europe. There are members of your own faculty who speak to 
 you in no uncertain terms of what a specialist in some line of 
 
i6 Bulletin 
 
 scholarship, thoroughly consecrated to her work, may be in the 
 life of young people. It is worth all the effort and struggle that 
 it will cost you to become master of some special branch of human 
 learning and then the interpreter of the same to other people. In 
 the schools of the South there is work for the most ambitious of 
 you — rural and urban schools which are revolutionalizing their 
 communities. I could tell you by the hour of young women teach- 
 ers who have displayed initiative and aggressiveness in education 
 that should cause them to be enrolled in the Golden Book of 
 Legends. Far too many women are teaching school simply be- 
 cause of economic demand ; there ought to be an increasing num- 
 ber who will go out from this institution to pursue teaching as 
 a sacred profession. 
 
 Time does not allow me to suggest other lines of endeavor. 
 Helen Gould in business, Jane Addams in social service. Miss 
 Glasgow and Miss Johnston in literature. Dean Gildersleeve and 
 President Thomas in higher education, and hundreds of others 
 in all fields of human endeavor should be perpetual reminders of 
 the creative opportunities that are open to the young women of 
 the present generation. They have careers fully as useful as, and 
 sometimes more significant than, those of women who have found 
 themselves in the home and in society. They have made homes 
 for the delinquent and the unfortunate ; they have lighted fires on 
 the altars of human souls ; they have made the light to shine in 
 the dark corners. Their children have been incarnate ideas in 
 the lives of others. They have done for the State and for com- 
 munities what others have done in the home. They do not lose 
 their womanhood, nor their sense of motherhood. Theirs is the 
 joy that belongs to the redeemers of the world; theirs is the 
 reward of those who are bringing in the kingdom of God. If you 
 read and study and think, you will find more and more doors 
 thrown open to those who have the vision and faculty divine. 
 
 My last word is simply this. Whatever you may do in life, you 
 will miss tlie full significance of this day if you do not realize 
 that you have just l)egun to live. One of the popular fallacies 
 that we have to combat both with regard to religion and to edu- 
 cation is that we ever attain. We are always in the process of 
 
Randolph-Macon Woman's College 17 
 
 becoming educated ; we ought always to be coming into a larger 
 knowledge of ourselves and the world in which we live. The dif- 
 ference between you this morning is not what you are now, but 
 what you will be ten and twenty and thirty years from now. You 
 have been sailing the sea of life and have seen some of the islands 
 and continents, but fairer islands and greater continents are on the 
 uncharted deep for those of venturous soul. You have fought 
 battles already, but whether you have won or lost, greater bat- 
 tles are yet to be fought on all the fields of human endeavor. 
 You have climbed a part of the way up the mountain of life and 
 have seen some fair prospects, but the real visions are at the 
 top — the panorama of spreading plains, and neighboring peaks, 
 and o'er arching skies — "the shining table lands to which our God 
 himself is sun and moon." 
 
1 8 Bulletin 
 
 Faculty Notes 
 
 Dr. G. G. Laubscher, Professor of Romance Languages, has 
 been granted a sabbatic leave of absence for the year 19 15-16. 
 Dr. Laubscher expects to spend the year in research and study in 
 this country and abroad. As his substitute the Board has secured 
 the services of Mr. Clarence E. Leavenworth, of Cleveland, Ohio. 
 Mr. Leavenworth received his A. B. degree from Hamilton Col- 
 lege in 1909, and spent the next four years in teaching in the 
 high schools of Cleveland. In 191 1 he went abroad, and spent 
 the year in study in Germany and Paris. During the past year he 
 has been doing graduate work at Yale University, from which 
 institution he holds his Master's degree. Professor Leavenworth 
 is held in the highest esteem, both as a gentleman and a scholar, 
 by all who are acquainted with his work. He will receive a 
 cordial welcome from the faculty and students of the Woman's 
 College. 
 
 Miss Nellie V. Powell, A. M., Ph. M., Adjunct-Professor of 
 English, has also been granted leave of absence for the scholastic 
 year, and her place will be supplied by Miss Roberta D. Cornelius. 
 Miss Cornelius is an A. B. graduate of the College of the class of 
 1909, and was an Instructor in English here from 191 1 to 1913. 
 The College community will extend a cordial welcome to her on 
 her return to Alma Mater. 
 
 Miss Alice H. Belding, A. B., Director of Physical Education, 
 will spend the scholastic year on leave of absence in special study 
 in her department in Boston. The gymnasium work and the 
 athletic interests of the College will be cared for during her 
 absence by Miss Nelson and Miss Nelson's sister. Miss Bertha, 
 who has just been graduated from the Sargent School for Physi- 
 cal Education, Cambridge, Mass. 
 
 In place of Miss M. G. Elkins, Ph. D., resigned, Miss Hazel 
 Elizabeth Field has been appointed Instructor in Biology. Miss 
 Field is taking her Master's degree at the University of Chicago 
 this summer. Her undergraduate work was done in Western 
 College for Women. She has also studied three summers at the 
 liiological Laboratory at Woods Hole. Besides her work as 
 Assistant in the iiiological Laboratory of the University of 
 
Randolph-Macon Woman's College 19 
 
 Chicago, she has had two years of experience in teaching Science 
 in Bellhaven College, Mississippi. 
 
 Miss Mabel Kate Whiteside, A. B., Adjunct-Professor of 
 Greek and Latin, who has spent the year in the University of 
 Chicago on leave of absence, received her Master's degree at the 
 last Convocation, and will return to her work in the College in 
 September. 
 
 Miss Gillie A. Larew, A. M., Adjunct-Professor of Mathe- 
 matics, who has also been spending the past year in graduate 
 study in the University of Chicago, has received an appointment 
 as Instructor in the Department of Mathematics in that intsitu- 
 tion, and her leave of absence has been extended for another year. 
 
 Dr. Herbert C. Lipscomb, Professor of Latin, has charge of 
 the Department of Latin in the Summer Session of the Johns 
 Hopkins University. Professor Lipscomb is an alumnus of the 
 University, and his appointment is a source of gratification to all 
 friends of the Woman's College. 
 
 Miss Mary Lura Sherrill, A. M., Instructor in Chemistry, is 
 teaching Chemistry in the Greensboro Summer Normal. 
 
 Miss Jean Paxton, A. B., '09, who for the past three years has 
 been the very efficient general secretary of the Young Women's 
 Christian Association, has received announcement of her accept- 
 ance as a missionary in China, and has been assigned to the 
 Y. W. C. A. work in Canton, China. Miss Helen Becker, A. B,. 
 instructor in Latin, has been selected as her successor. Miss 
 Becker is admirably equipped for this important work and will 
 receive the hearty co-operation of the Faculty, students and Col- 
 lege community. 
 
 In place of Miss Becker, Miss Olivia N. Dorman, A. B., has 
 been appointed Instructor in Latin, a position she held in 19 13- 14. 
 
 Notes of Progress 
 
 At the recent meeting of the Board of Trustees of Randolph- 
 Macon College, provision was made for overhauling and renovat- 
 ing the bathrooms in W. W. Smith Hall. The floors will be 
 concreted and the latest and most improved fixtures will be 
 installed. 
 
20 * Bulletin 
 
 At the same meeting of the Board, the Executive Committee 
 of the Woman's College was given authority to install an electric 
 light and power plant in connection with the present central heat- 
 ing plant. This will enable the College to generate its own elec- 
 tricity and supply the buildings and laboratories with current 
 sufficient for all purposes. These improvements will be ready for 
 service at the opening of the session in September. 
 
 The work of cataloging and classifying the books of the Library 
 is progressing under the direction of Miss Forbes, Librarian, and 
 Mrs. Jennings, former head cataloguer of Cornell University. 
 During the past year about twelve hundred new volumes were 
 added to the Library at an expense of $1,581.00. 
 
 Our Young Women's Christian Association 
 Wins Prizes in San Francisco 
 
 According to the list of awards published in the Association 
 Monthly, Randolph-Macon Woman's College wins two first 
 prizes, and three second prizes in the Young Women's Christian 
 Association contests held in connection with the Panama-Pacific 
 Exposition. 
 
 First Prize: (i) The Association having the largest num- 
 ber in proportion to total membership enrolled in voluntary Bible 
 classes. 
 
 (2) Association having the largest attendance at the weekly 
 meetings in proportion to its women student body. 
 
 Second Prize : ( i ) Association having largest number in 
 proportion to total membership enrolled in mission and social 
 study classes. 
 
 (2) Association whose cabinet takes the highest grade in an 
 examination by the National Board on the Association movement. 
 
 (3) Association having the largest number of girls, in pro- 
 portion to total membership, who have earned Helen Gould Shep- 
 ard Bibles. 
 
 The Woman's College also wins Honorable Mention in three 
 other contests. These contests were open to all women's col- 
 leges and co-educational colleges and universities in the country. 
 
3 0112105927658 
 
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