"
"----Eight children born within twelve years, two of them
feeble-minded."
"----First wife died at nineteen, leaving three children.
"----Fourteen children. First wife died at twenty-eight, having
borne eight children in ten years."
From that age of universal early marrying and of promiscuous
early dying we have come in two centuries to an age of delayed
(and even omitted) marrying and of a settled determination to
keep on living.
The women's colleges are so new and they attracted in their early
days so un-average a sort of girl that their records are not
conclusive. Nevertheless, here are some guiding facts from Smith
College, of Northampton, Massachusetts:
--> We are taking college facts not because this article is
confined in any respect to college people but merely because the
matrimonial histories in the records of the colleges are the most
complete we know of.)
In 1888, Smith College, in its first ten classes, had graduated
370 women.
In 1903, fifteen years later, among those 370 women there were
212 who were still single.
This record does not satisfy Mr. G. Stanley Hall, who figured it
out. The remaining facts, however, might be considered more
cheering:
The 158 Smith women who had married had borne 315 children.
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