There were, besides, deportment, dancing, and music, also
ornamental. The only practical occupations were keeping house and
nursing, and if a girl was obliged to do such things, she did not seek
the aristocratic "finishing school." The "home" was the proper place for
all that. In Milly's case the "home" was adequately run by her
grandmother with the help of one colored servant. So Horatio, being just
able to afford the tuition, Milly was privileged to "finish herself."
Of course she forgot all the facts so laboriously acquired within a
short six months after she read her little essay on "Plato's Conception
of the Beautiful" at the graduation exercises. (That effort, by the way,
lay heavy on the neighborhood for weeks, but was pronounced a triumph.
It was certainly a masterpiece of fearless quotation.)... Learning
passed over Milly like a summer sea over a shining sandbar and left no
trace behind, none whatever. It was the same way with music. Milly could
sing church hymns in a pleasant voice and thumped a little heavily on
the piano after learning her piece.... She used to say, years
afterward,--"I have no gifts; I was never clever with books. I like
life, people!" and she would stretch out her hands gropingly to the
broad horizon.
This year at the Ashland Institute helped to enlarge that horizon
somewhat. And one other thing she got with the absurd meal of
schooling,--a vague but influential something,--an "ideal of American
womanhood.
Pages:
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43