And then, when she was nineteen, she broke the heart of David Windom.
For two years she had been a student in the University situated
but half a score of miles from the place where she was born,
a co-educational institution of considerable size and importance.
Windom did not believe in women's colleges. He believed in the
free school with its broadening influence, its commingling of the
sexes in the search for learning, and in the divine right of woman
to develop her mind through the channels that lead ultimately and
inevitably to superiority of man. He believed that the girl trained
and educated in schools devoted exclusively to the finer sex fails
to achieve understanding as well as education. The only way to give
a girl a practical education,--and he believed that every woman
should have one,--was to start her off even with the boy who was
training to become her master in all respects.
During her second year at the University she met Edward Crown,
a senior. He was the son of a blacksmith in the city, and he was
working his way through college with small assistance from his
parent, who held to the conviction that a man was far better off
if he developed his muscles by hard work and allowed the brain
to take care of itself. Young Crown was a good-looking fellow of
twenty-three, clean-minded, ambitious, dogged in work and dogged
in play.
Pages:
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33