ou entered Vassar and asked me what I thought of
your doing so.

You wrote me after you married Doctor McAllister, and asked me what I
thought of that. My reply was a wedding gift and a telegram of good
wishes. Now, after three years of married life, you write again and ask
me to decide a question which has caused some discussion between you and
the doctor.

"He did not take my view of the matter at first," you say, "but he does
now. Still, I feel that I would like another unprejudiced opinion
before I take the contemplated step. You knew I left college before
finishing my course. I was in love and the doctor urged me not to make
him wait another year. He said I knew enough to make him happy, and so I
consented."

Then you proceed to tell me that you have never regretted this step, and
that you have the best husband in the world. But you have decided
musical gifts, and before meeting the doctor you intended going abroad
to cultivate them after you finished at Vassar. This old ambition has
taken hold of you again, and you want to join a friend, one of your
classmates, who sails in June to study art in Europe. You desire to take
a two or three years' course, and then you will be equipped with an
accomplishment which could be made a profession if necessity demanded.

"One never knows what the future holds," you say, "and it is the duty of
every woman to make the most of herself." Both remarks are as true as
they are trite. An almost graduate of Vassar should be more original in
expressing herself.

But there is another duty a woman should not forget--the duty to stand
by her marriage vows and to make her husband a good wife. It seems the
doctor did not eagerly approve your idea at the beginning. I am glad he
did not. Unless a wife is in a precarious state of health or has an
ailing child, I always suspect the honesty of a husband who cheerfully
seconds her suggestion of a protracted absence from home.

When a man shows no regret at having his wife away for an entire season,
there is something wrong with his heart.

Love does not find its home there, or he could not speed her going so
far, and for so long a time, at the bidding of ambition or pleasure. You
evidently have won the doctor over by argument, and made him feel that
he is selfish to tie you down or clip the wings of your ambition. The
American husband is so fearful of seeming a tyrant. "He realizes now,"
you say, "that a woman has the right to develop the