Very Muck the Sams

Bruce Herald, Volume XXXI, Issue 3142, 16 February 1900, Page 7

Very Muck the Sams

Oace upon a time there was a nice, kind old lady who had very narrow ideas about certain things, No neighbor of hers was allowed to smoke in her kitchen and when Ezra came in from ibe barn he was compelled to remove his boots on the " back stoop." Life went well with the old lady until she was older than that. She attended church regularly twice each Sunday and on Wednesday spent the whole afternoon getting ready for prayer meeting. She was very strong at revivals and her voice rose higher than aDy other when the congregation stood up and sang number 67 on page 32. One day tbe kind old lady bad a letter from her brother that told her he had sent his daughter to a big college where co-education was the system io vogue. The kind old lady held up her two hands in holy horror. The idea, she thought, of sending a young girl to a college far away from home where ehe would be allowed to mingle freely with the youth of the opposite sex, where no restrictions would be placed upon her and where the motherly eye could not scan her every actioD. The kind old lady was shocked beyond words. Then, in the middle of a term, that eiece away at echoo!, at her father's request, invited her kind old aunt down to spend a few days with her and " go through " the college buildings. The old lady was glad to go. She was immensely desirous of finding first hand that her suspicions of co-educa-tion had been rightly gauged. So she visited the niece. The night of her arrival she was taken by the girl to ft college social. There she saw the young men and women enjoying themselves at harmless amusements. The next day ahe attended a class in history. Boys and girls sat together. She saw them walking side by side along the campus paths and studying together under the trees. And it was all so very good, and bo very far from possessing harmful quali- J »iea, that the kirjd old lady found her former beliefs crumbling beneath her own eyes, and ears, and senses. When she waited on the platform for the train that was to take her back to her home in the country her niece said to her, ••Well, Aunt Grace, whar do you think of co-education ?" The kind old lady gazed into the clear, frank eyes of the girl and answered, with a little tremor in her voice, " Well* after all, it's a good deal like life, isn't it?"