than the new colony could give to educate her afterward ungrateful son.
The number of young men educated by the individual efforts of women cannot be estimated. T. W. Higginson, in the Woman's Journal, says:
The late President Walker once told me that, in his judgment, one-quarter of the young men in Harvard College were being carried through by the special self-denial and sacrifices of women. I cannot answer for the ratio, but I can testify to having been an instance of this, myself; and to having known a never-ending series of such cases of self-devotion.
Some of these men, educated by the labor and self-sacrifice of others, look down upon the social position in which their women friends are still forced to remain. The result to the recipient has often been of doubtful value, so far as the development of the affections is concerned. Sometimes the great obligation has been forgotten. Only in rare instances, to either party did the life-long sacrifice on the part of the women of the family become of permanent and spiritual value!
The average woman of forty years ago was very humble in her notions of the sphere of woman. What if she did hunger and thirst after knowledge? She could do nothing with it, even if she could get it. So she made a fetich of some male relative, and gave him the mental food for which she herself was starving, and devoted all her energies towards helping him to become what she felt, under better conditions, she herself might have been. It was enough in those early days to be the mother
deplored that Lucy Downing established the unwise precedent of educating one member of the family at the expense of the rest; an example followed by too many women since her time. Harvard College itself has followed it as well, in that it has so long excluded from its privileges that portion of the human family to which Lucy Downing belonged. Although women have never been permitted to become students of this college, or of any of the schools connected with it, yet they have always taken a great interest in its pecuniary welfare, and the University is largely indebted to the generosity of women for its endowment and support. From the records of Harvard College, it appears that funds have been contributed by 167 women, which amount, in the aggregate, to $325,000. Out of these funds a proportion of the university scholarships were founded, and at least one of its professors' chairs. In its Divinity school alone five of the ten scholarships bear the names of women. Caroline A. Plummer of Salem gave $15,000 to found the Plummer Professorship of Christian Morals. Sarah Derby bequeathed $1,000 towards founding the Hersey Professorship of Anatomy and Physic. The Holden Chapel was built with money given for that purpose by Mrs. Samuel Holden and her daughters. Anna E. P. Sever, in 1879, left a legacy to this college of $140,000. [See Harvard Roll of Honor for women in Harvard Register in 1880-81.] Other known benefactors of Harvard University are: Lady Moulson, Hannah Sewall, Mary Saltonstall, Dorothy Saltonstall, Joanna Alford, Mary P. Townsend, Ann Toppan, Eliza Farrar, Ann F. Schaeffer, Levina Hoar, Rebecca A. Perkins, Caroline Merriam, Sarah Jackson, Hannah C. Andrews, Nancy Kendall, Charlotte Harris, Mary Osgood, Lucy Osgood, Sarah Winslow, Julia Bullock, Marian Hovey, Anna Richmond, Caroline Richmond, Clara J. Moore and Susan Cabot.—[H. H. R. The question is often asked, why are women so much more desirous than men to see their children educated? Because it is a right that has been denied to themselves. To them education means liberty, wealth, position, power. When the black race at the South were emancipated, they were far more eager for education than the poor whites, and for the same reason.—[Eds.
