CHAPTER IV.

Wednesday's Letters.

(1) Sir,—I, too, was disgusted with Mr. Algernon Dexter's cheap sneer at women's education. He has, it seems, 'no opinion' on it. Allow me to point out that, whatever his opinion may be, Women's Education has come to stay. The time is past when Women could be relegated to the kitchen or the nursery, and told, in the words of the poet Byron, that these constituted her 'whole existence.' Not so; and if Mr. Dexter is inclined to doubt it let him read the works of George Elliot (Mrs. J. W. Cross) or Marion Crawford. They will open his eyes to the task he has undertaken.

I am, Sir, yours, etc,

"AUDI ALTERAM PARTEM."

(2) SIR,—Mr. Algernon Dexter thinks women's education 'a large order'— not a very elegant expression, let me say, en passant, for one who aspires to be known as a 'stylist.' Still a large order it is, and one that as an imperial race we shall be forced to envisage. If our children are to be started in life as fit citizens of this empire, with a grasp on its manifold and far reaching complexities of interest, and unless the Germans are to beat us, we must provide them with educated mothers. 'The child is father of the man,' but the mother has, me judice, no less influence on his subsequent career. And this is not to be done by putting back the hands of the clock, or setting them to make pies and samplers, but by raising them to mutually co-operate and further what has been aptly termed 'The White Man's Burden.' Such, at any rate, though I may not live to see it, is the conviction of:

"A MUS. DOC. OF FORTY YEARS' STANDING."

(3) SIR,—'High School' has done a public service. A popular novelist may be licensed to draw on his imagination; but hitting below the belt is another thing, whoever wears it. Mr Dexter's disdainful treatment of that eminent educationalist Mr. Platt-Culpepper—who is in his grave and therefore unable to reply (so like a man!)—can be called nothing less. I hope it will receive the silent contempt it deserves.

Yours indignantly,

"MERE WOMAN."