Here is located Vassar college,
occupying about eight hundred acres, and is the first
institution in the world devoted exclusively to the higher
education of women. It solved in a practical way the question
that had been discussed in many lands for ages: "Could women be
granted equal intellectual privileges with men without
shattering the social life?" Therefore, Matthew Vassar, because
he was blessed with vast wealth, has taught the world the all-
important fact that "ignorance is the curse of God and knowledge
the wings whereby we fly to heaven," a statement as applicable
to women as to men.
Had the countries of Europe spent their money for a cause as
worthy as this in place of building such expensive monuments in
memory of tyrannical rulers of the Hohenzollern type, the world
might never have witnessed the indescribable horrors of a world
war. What matters it if Russia and Italy contain such marvelous
cathedrals as long as ignorance holds sway among the peasant?
Mr. Vassar shall long live in the memory of a grateful people,
and he erected a monument so vast and magnificent that only
Eternity will rightly gauge its proportions, for he built not
for a dead past, but a bright and glorious future.
THE CATSKILLS
We spent a never-to-be-forgotten evening near the base of Mount
Treluper at the Howland House. How cool and quiet the place was,
with only the rippling melody of a mountain stream to disturb
it!
We walked along the highway that led through the most charming
scenery of this lovely region and glimpsed pictures just as
beautiful as many places of Europe that have an international
reputation.
As we strolled along the babbling stream that flowed over its
rock-strewn bottom, we thought of Bryant's words:
"The river sends forth glad sounds and tripping o'er its
bed
Of pebbly sands or leaping down the rocks,
Seems with continuous laughter to rejoice
In its own being."
How these songful streams beguile you to the woodland and
through tangles of tall ferns and grasses, until they emerge in
some meadow where they loiter among the tall sedges and iris or
"lose themselves in a tangle of alder to emerge again in sweet
surprise, then as if remembering an important errand, they bound
away like a school boy who has loitered along the road all
morning until he hears the last bell ring."
We have heard of Artists' brook in the Saco valley in New
England, but here every stream is clothed in exquisite tangles
of foliage and light. The pleasant reaches and graceful curves
through charming glens that are part in shadow and part in
light, what artist ever caught their subtile charm?
