Letters From A Father To His Daughter Entering College

THERE has never been any question about your going to college. Your mother's life at Vas-sar had given her a special eagerness to send her daughter to that or some other good college. But now, that the college is decided upon, I can easily see that there were three, among other reasons, which have led us to make our choice.

One reason is that the college is not too big. A very big college for boys is bad, but a very big college for girls is worse. For do not girls have peculiar need of individual care? There should be, I believe, specially careful oversight of each and every one. When I think, too, of how large a part of your life and work will be individual, I am the more eager that you in your education should not be one of a mass. A big college, of course, you may say, should give as careful care to the individual as the small. It should: but it does not, and, certainly, it is more difficult, and these difficulties the colleges do not seem to have the machinery for overcoming. So I am glad you are going to a college big enough for you to find a field of companionship, a variety and richness of studies, and not so big that you will be regarded by the president as one among a thousand. I am also glad we have decided to send you to a college near a big city, but not in it. A college for girls in a big city does not give room for play, in both the metaphorical and literal sense, and girls must have a chance to play, to be their free selves; but a college far away from a big city always seems to me to make the temptation pretty strong to fall into habits of dress and manner which the world does not value highly. I want you to be urbane, and urbane is only urban with the last vowel added. But I also want you still to have room and space and time for play.