Part 10

“In the next, so-called ‘heredity room’ were records showing that children of the same parents are slightly more like one another than they are like the average, in height, color of eyes and hair, and in all the mental traits that have been studied in this connection. The physical traits of parents tend to alternate, their mental traits to blend, among their children. Eminent men are almost always found to have near relatives of eminence. Family resemblances are most marked in traits, like musical ability, that are least affected by environment. Here, too, were the life histories of many twins, showing that those closely alike at birth and in early rearing usually remained so in spite of later changes in environment; and that those unlike at birth remained so in spite of identity of nurture. From such and similar facts the department drew the conclusions that nature predominates greatly over nurture, that inheritance is specialized rather than general, and from the original nature of the parents rather than from acquired traits.

“Individuals who are subjected to the influence of a particular environment are usually so much more influenced by the forces that select them for that environment, that accurate knowledge in this field is obtainable only with difficulty. The fact, for example, that most Congressmen are college graduates is probably due not so much to their education as to their early giving evidence of ability that demanded such training. In the words of the professor: ‘The factor of selection is commonly neglected, the influence of environment commonly overestimated. Environment does not create, but merely selects and stimulates natural abilities. About all that education can do is to supply facilities for and remove obstacles to the growth of the brain, encourage desirable activities by making them pleasurable, and inhibit their opposites by making them uncomfortable. Mental hygiene, opportunity, and incentive are the foundations of the teacher’s Blackstone.’

“I was prepared to be impressed most of all by what Portia called the ‘human-nature room,’ for here were printed records of many studies based on answers to widely circulated ‘questionnaires.’ From one set it was deduced that half of us have favorite sounds, open vowels and liquid consonants leading; one-fourth are fond of particular words, ‘murmur’ being the choice of the majority; most people are fond of particular names, ‘Helen’ being the prime favorite. Similar records showed that women read more than men, but reach the period of maximum reading sooner, the greatest reading age being about twenty, the average amount small after thirty-five, most people reading for emotional rather than intellectual reasons. Yet others indicated that muscular power increases and attention decreases in summer, the mind being at its best from December until April.

“I was concluding that here was a very mine of richness for the novelist, when the professor remarked: ‘We attribute small importance to this sort of thing. Conclusions based on reports from artificially selected and incompetent observers and combined in an unscientific manner have no general validity. Only direct expert observation of representative cases, and accurate statistical study of all the factors involved, can bring reliable results. We may base our educational ideals on philosophic or popular theories, but our study of the nature of mind and the ways of affecting it, to be at all valuable, must be rigidly scientific.’

“Well, I had learned enough and to spare without these suggestive, if inaccurate, observations of general human nature, and without even looking into certain rooms, where zoölogists and psychologists united in studying the development of mind in the animal world.

“‘I presume,’ I remarked to Portia as we left the building, ‘that when you come to consider suitors for your daughters, you will inquire into not their social and financial standing, but their personal equations of perception and motor-activity, and request statistics concerning the central tendency and variability of each of their mental and moral traits?’ ‘Undoubtedly,’ she replied, ‘and I should want to know similar facts for their parents, and also the details of their reaction to humidity and to heat.’

“‘Shall you require similar data concerning the prospective father of those daughters?’ I asked. ‘Perhaps,’ she concluded; ‘but considering the present undeveloped state of the science, I should insist on conducting those investigations myself. Just now I have no time for such experiments. I must to a lecture. Good-bye.’

“Thus Portia left me to proceed to my lunch and to cogitate alone, a more confirmed perfectibilian than ever, marvelling at the achievement of this generation, and half prepared to accept as true an inscription that I had seen in the last room we visited: ‘Psychology has a message to the world, richer and more original than that of the Renaissance.’”

XIX

_The Club of the Bachelor Maids_

Professor Maturin told me that he was convinced, after very brief cogitation, that no one but his young friend Portia could have caused him to receive the impressively simple card which lay before him, reading: “The Pleasure of your Company is requested at the First Annual Gentlemen’s Day at the Club of the Bachelor Maids.” Therefore, before dispatching his acknowledgment to the house committee, he wrote to Portia that he should be more than happy to accept the invitation if she would be good enough to accompany him and see him safely through. To this she acceded with a promptness that implied her anticipation of the suggestion; and so the designated afternoon found them entering the portal together. I quote the account of his experiences as exactly as I can remember it.

“The house, which had been remodelled out of two dwellings in the fifties near the avenue, was very interestingly although simply furnished, in colonial fashion for the most part. There was a spacious public room with tapestried walls and wicker furniture, a library and a reading-room with home-like fireplaces, and an extensive lunch and dinner-room in mahogany and cream. I understood that there were also Turkish baths in the basement, and a sun parlor and a garden on the roof, but these were not shown.

“When I turned my attention from the furnishings to the company which had assembled in the larger rooms, I realized the truth of a recent observation that our American women are steadily improving in personal appearance. There was never, to be sure, any crying need for such improvement. Yet, after examining the portraits of early American women by Copley, West, and Stuart, hung in the dinner-room, or the loan collection of Malbone and Staigg miniatures in the library, it was impossible not to be forcibly struck by the living faces about them. Whether due to the operation of natural selection or to our national crossing of races, to modern intellectual advancement or to contemporary social emphasis on better air, food, and exercise, I cannot say. But the superiority of the modern women in symmetry and grace, delicacy and modulation of coloring, and in variety and individuality of expression, was beyond question. The splendid carriage of many of the guests and their refined voices, Mr. Henry James to the contrary notwithstanding, were a delight at the moment, and have been a pleasant memory ever since.

“Portia was so much pleased at my pleasure, that she was quite willingly drawn to a recess whence I could look and where she could elucidate without interruption. There she told me what she could concerning the possessors of such aesthetic mouths, lustrous eyes, and autumn-tinted hair as especially fascinated my gaze.

“I ventured also to inquire about the wearers of particular gowns, for even my masculine eye could perceive, here and there, certain rare harmonies of costume with appearance and bearing, and I was flattered to be told of almost every person who thus attracted my attention that she was generally thought to be especially interesting. Whereupon I jotted down in my pilgrim’s scrip the observation that, in spite of fashion, dress may yet sometimes become a subtle expression of personality. Portia, indeed, told me that fashion troubled some of these ladies so little that one of them had made an aphorism to the effect that ‘Individual women are seldom in fashion; they are usually in advance of it.’ Which saying I remembered instead of my own.

“This phrase and its maker, a gifted designer of jewelry, deflected our conversation to the subject of occupations, it being a qualification for membership in the club that ‘one must be somebody or do something for one’s self,’ as Portia put it; a requirement more strictly enforced than that of the celibacy implied by the name of the organization. As one member and another appeared or passed with her guests, Portia singled out for me the architect and the decorator who had planned and furnished the house, and then the florist who had arranged the decorations, and the caterer who had provided the unique refreshments of the day. There were also numerous librarians and settlement workers, two successful real estate operators, and the manager of an important branch of the office work of a huge life insurance company. One handsome, middle-aged woman, that I took to be one of the philanthropic patrons who had made the club’s equipment possible, Portia singled out as a practitioner of what struck me as the most interesting profession of all--a department-store critic. It was her function to make a daily survey of every part of one of our immense emporiums in order, from her observation, her knowledge of other shops, and of their patrons’ tastes, to make suggestions for improvements in stock, display, or service. I saw also a number of artists and authors, reviewers and publishers’ readers. In one of the rooms an excellent programme was being rendered by several members representative of a musical group, which alternated with similar literary, artistic, and dramatic coteries, in providing entertainment for a series of weekly club evenings throughout the winter.

“Upon my making particular inquiry concerning such of the club’s members as were graduates of our colleges for women, Portia for a time devoted her attention to representatives of that class. A number of these, naturally enough, were college instructors. Several were physicians and hospital officials; one, an attorney, was probation officer in a juvenile court; two were on the editorial staff of newspapers. Many found regular employment in religious or philanthropic enterprises; only one was in business--as assistant to the secretary of a large electrical company.

“When I was unoriginal enough to ask the conventional question concerning the general attitude of college women toward marriage, Portia gave what I instantly recognized as the only possible answer, inconclusive as it was: the college woman was as yet too recent a phenomenon for any generalization about her to be safe. The particular question of her attitude to marriage could be solved only by the well-nigh impossible process of comparing equal groups of college and non-college women of the same social kind. Such indications as there were showed no great differences, except perhaps that college women were likely to marry somewhat later.

“Indeed, I found that the club was intended, for one thing, to be a sort of outpost for studying and, if need be, aiding the solution of just such problems in the economic and social life of women, ‘especially of such as would go a-careering,’ in the words of the phrase-maker. Among the many announcements on a bulletin board, I saw that a well-known litterateur--or should one say litteratrice?--was to speak on Madame de Staël, George Sand, and Mrs. Browning; a philanthropist on Madame Roland and the Countess Schimmelmann; a psychologist on Marie Bashkirtseff and Mary MacLean. And there were lists of conferences on physiology and hygiene, sociology and economics, and religion and philanthropy, in addition to announcements of the weekly entertainments already mentioned.

“Another bulletin bore an equal number of announcements of all sorts of outside recreations, from the opera and selected theatres to golf and Adirondack camps.

“In all of its activities the organization displayed not only the same energy but also the same breadth of view. The cant of sentimentality and the anti-cant of grievance were alike conspicuously absent. The club picture gallery included Rossetti’s ‘Blessed Damozel’ and Alma-Tadema’s ‘Cleopatra,’ as well as portraits of Susan B. Anthony and the Countess of Warwick. Its library contained social studies as unlike as Aristophanes’ ‘Ladies in Parliament’ and Mary Wollstonecraft’s ‘Vindication of the Rights of Women;’ and philosophic deductions as opposed as Comte’s ‘Worship of Women’ and Schopenhauer’s ‘Woman as Insufficient Reason.’ The only piece of militant feminism anywhere to be seen was one of a series of inscriptions on oaken panels:

_Women have risen to high excellence In every art whereto they give their care._

On closer inspection, I found this to be a quotation from Ariosto. Beside it was an inscription from Herbert Spencer which read: ‘If women comprehended all that is contained in the domestic sphere, they would ask no other.’ That the club realized the humorous as well as the serious suggestion of such juxtaposition was proved by one of the mantelpieces, where rested side by side an effigy of Egypt’s great queen Hatasu, and a fragment of a Roman matron’s epitaph, reading, ‘She stayed at home and span.’

“When I asked Portia to what conclusions, if any, her club life had led her, she confessed to only a few, and those very tentative. As compared with the married women of her acquaintance whose cultivation was equal to that of her fellow club members, most of the latter appeared over-serious, self-distrustful, or inconsistent. A few seemed to find full activity and satisfaction in careers for which they obviously possessed decided gifts. But the majority, after a certain eagerness for experience and self-realization had become satisfied, seemed to be but half-heartedly filling in their time while anticipating or desiring something else. This attitude, together with the census statistics, appeared to indicate that the chief career for the great majority of women was still through marriage. Whether it was becoming less so for the kind of women the club comprised, and if this were the case, what was the alternative--these were among the questions upon which the organization held itself open to conviction.

“For herself, Portia was happy still to be in the mood of acquisition: there were many things that she was eager to learn and to experience before it became time to inquire what she was going to be. As yet she had got no further than realizing that, while being a bachelor woman seemed to have obvious limitations, it was surely extremely pleasant to be a bachelor maid.

“I very honestly replied that, considering her youth and her opportunities, I would not have her feel differently--certainly not at present.”

XX

_A Small College_

Professor Maturin has always questioned the somewhat popular belief that the small college, once so important, is about to disappear between the portentously rumbling upper and nether millstones of the universities and the public schools. He was therefore more than glad to accept, in the form of an invitation to visit a professorial friend at a country college, an opportunity to see for himself.

During two hundred express-train miles away from the metropolis, and twenty more deliberate ones away from the main line, he thought a good deal about the matter, not without regret that the German ideal of specialized scholarship should completely overcome the English ideal of general culture. After the professor’s cordial greetings, conversation at once turned to this topic. The professor, however, was so unapprehensive that he claimed attention rather for the attractive situation of his town, after remarking that, as a matter of fact, the small colleges were increasing in attendance and resources much more rapidly, in proportion, than the great universities. His own college, in the last five years, had enlarged its endowment from three hundred thousand to nearly a million dollars, and its attendance from two to nearly four hundred students. Five hundred was to be the limit, the president and his faculty being unanimous in believing that no college should be too large to give attention to every student every day in every class. “This was sufficiently reassuring,” said Professor Maturin, as he told me about it, “to permit my attending comfortably to my surroundings, which were indeed charming.” I continue the account in his own words.

“The college campus stretched along the main street, at the southern end of the town--a large rectangle of wonderful greensward, resulting from the English recipe of watering for a hundred years, and guarded by a small army of enormous elms that must have been already in occupation when the tract was bought from the provincial proprietors, in the early years of the republic. Here stood the two buildings that accommodated all the academic and domestic life of the college during its first half century. Both of native limestone, with softer brownstone trimmings, the older was a notable example of the best American public architecture of an hundred years ago. The dozen other buildings nearby were similarly landmarks in the later history of the institution.

“The brownstone and dark brick chapel gave its lower floor to the libraries of the college and the literary societies, which made a total of about forty thousand volumes, some of them purchased and imported in bulk by the founders of the college. For student use the collection seemed quite adequate, not indeed for specialization, but certainly for the fundamental, general training for which the college stood. The work of the freshman and sophomore years consisted largely of required subjects, the junior and senior years largely of electives. This system, long in vogue, proved most acceptable, particularly to such graduates as my friend the professor, who had taken in college, Latin, Greek, French, and German; much English, some history, and a little economics; geology, physics, chemistry, physiology, and hygiene; mathematics up to and including calculus and astronomy; logic, psychology, ethics, and an introduction to philosophy--surely a broad foundation for his subsequent specialization in history. Later experience made him wish that he had studied also biology, sociology, and something of music and the fine arts. The first two of these were now provided by the institution.

“I had long heard of the president of the college as a distinguished clergyman and a more than kindly man. My first meeting with him left an impression of rarely mingled strength and fineness that every subsequent conversation but confirmed and deepened. I saw most of the professors, next morning, ranged on the chapel platform, and I subsequently learned to know all of them, either personally, or through my friend’s characterizations. This acquaintance was entirely in rebuttal of the charge that all professors belong to the mutually exclusive classes of those who know their subjects and those who love their students. These professors, almost to a man, managed to do both. The amount of wise and kindly personal consideration given to every student was little short of incredible, and had notable results in both character and culture. A better-mannered set of undergraduates I never saw, and this in spite of the fact that the freshmen indicated, for the most part, that the college had to work with more than ordinarily raw material. Something in the atmosphere added a fineness to the prevailing vigor, which delighted the eyes of a visitor accustomed to city anaemia, and produced a host of generous customs like doffing the hat to professors and standing in chapel while the president passed.

“I could not see that my friend’s very considerable scholarship was hindered by the obligation that he felt to know the name and something of the nature of each of his students. Indeed, I think that it was rather helped. His intellectual life had a freedom from dreaminess, on the one hand, and from pedantry, on the other, that I could attribute to no other cause. Such constant and intimate contact with youthful immaturity and ignorance would probably cause deterioration in a man of inferior ability and training, but my friend was both able and well trained, and so were most of his colleagues. His college course had been immediately followed by a year at one American university, and two years at another. Then, after an interval of teaching, he had had six months in England and a year and a half on the Continent, finishing in Germany with a doctor’s degree and a dissertation of real historical value. The others had had similar experiences, the language men, particularly, having enjoyed prolonged foreign residence.

“I was interested to learn that the head of the department of English, although an inspiring teacher and a writer of originality and distinction, had never been to college at all, but had gained his training and had amassed his really notable scholarship entirely through private instruction, individual reading, and extensive travel, and had come to his professorship only after a successful career as a critic and an editor. I was sufficiently impressed by this to inquire of the president how he avoided the requirement I had heard more than one university officer make, that every instructor should be the possessor of a doctor’s degree. He answered almost abruptly: ‘In selecting our staff, as everything else, we try to ignore the union label. It is always the sign of the conventional, and the conventional, especially in the humanities, too often means the mediocre.’ And then he changed the subject. That was surely radical educational doctrine, but in this case, at least, it was certainly justified by the results.

“In fine, the faculty seemed to me quite equal to the average of a university staff, and, because of their constant accessibility, appeared to be considerably more influential as teachers of immature students.