Valentine Democrat

The club, the class and the lecture have taken a large place in the lives of many women. In many enterprising towns and villages the courses offered by clubs and villages absorb nearly all the time the home-making woman can have for intellectual life. She belongs to a Shakespeare club and a class in current events, and a guild for the study of church history. Her scant leisure permits very little reading, except such as is done in connection with these courses. The results achieved at the end of a winter will doubtless be abundant; but unless she is on her guard, they will not include any great gain in power and accuracy of individual judgment. Whenever a doubtful point has presented itself in her reading, she has waived it, in the certainty that it will be discussed at length at the meeting of the class, and that she will be helped to her decision by the ideas developed there. Did Hamlet really love Ophelia? Do Shakespeare's sonnets tell his own story? Ought the English education bill to pass? Is reciprocity with Canada practicable? Is church union possible? These questions and a hundred others will be sure to be settled with a certain pleasant dogmatism by the leader of the course of study. Why should she trouble herself about them beforehand? Because a community where one view only prevails in matters of taste and judgment is likely to be a dull place and an unprogressive one. After all, the world has made its longest strides toward enlightenment through the efforts of independent thinkers. In the fascination of associated intellectual work it behooves the modern woman not to forget the value of the phrase which, at least by implication, has prefaced most of the world's great thinking: "In my opinion."