WHAT BECOMES OF COLLEGE WOMEN.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XVI, Issue XII, 21 March 1896, Page 324

WHAT BECOMES OF COLLEGE WOMEN.

SOME AMERICAN EXPERIENCES. Dr. C. F. Thwing summarises in the North American Review for November the result of some interesting investigations which have been made as to the future of the college women of the United States. He says :— ‘ About fifty-five per cent, of the woman graduates of our colleges marry. Twenty per cent, of all women who become of a marriageable age do not marry, and it is apparent that about forty per cent, of college women, who have become of a marriageable age, have not married. The question, therefore, is what work are the unmarried women doing ? Are they doing a work of value sufficient to justify the time and money spent in securing an education ? Are they doing a work of the highest educational or ethical or civil value ? The number of women who enter public employments is increasing, and these employments are usually inconsistent with the life of a wife and mother. We therefore shall find an increasing proportion of the distinguished women who are college graduates unmarried. FAME. ‘ I have recently had an examination made of Appleton to discover the nature of the early training and also the character of the employment of the persons therein named. The work contains between fifteen thousand and sixteen thousand names, of which only 633 are names of women. Of these 633 women 320 are authors ; seventy-three are singers or actresses ; ninety-one are sculptors or painters ; sixty-eight are educators ; twentyone may be called philanthropists; fourteen are missionaries ; thirteen doctors; twenty-eight may be described as having their places in this article because of heroic deeds. There are also three who are described as engaging in business, one in nursing, and one in following the profession of law. Of these 633 persons also nineteen have had a college training; of the 320 women who are named as authors, only nine are college women ; of the ninety-one artists only one ; of the actresses also one ; of the educators seven ; of the missionaries one only is college-bred. It is evident that the college woman has not become famous. From the great field of literature the college woman has been absent as a creator for the last twenty years. The number of books, of every sort, written by college women, is very few. MARRIAGE. * The effect of marriage upon the winning of distinction is not so great as first thought would lead one to believe, for of the six hundred and thirty-three women named in Appleton’s Cyclopaedia, one-half are married and one-half are unmarried. ‘The American college has given us great scholars, greatphilanthropists, greatadministrators, great teachers. It has given us Frances E. Willard and Lucy Stone. It has not given us great writers. It has given us no great novelist. It has given us one or two, and only one or two, essayists. But all exceptions aside, it is certainly true that the graduates of the colleges for women have not made that contribution to literature that they have made to scholarship, or to teaching, or to administra tion.'

The Tontine System.- LorenzoTonte, a Neapolitan, introduced his system into France about 1650. A cer, tain number of persons subscribe to a general fundEach draws an annuity according to his age ; the annuity of the survivors increases as each member dies. The last survivor receives the total annuity during his life. This is the general plan, altered and improved on since it was originated.