2 24 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



I could give a long and honorable list of names of woman writers 

 and artists, in many lands, from mediioval to modern times; and 

 one of the interesting things revealed by such a record would be 

 the number who were working with or were directly inspired and 

 helped by a father or a brother. The court had some names of 

 women who, like Lady Jane Grey, upheld the model of purity 

 while taking the learning that naturally accompanied wealth. 

 But elegant letters had again become the associate of moral and 

 religious corruption in the courts, and the " ignorance of preach- 

 ing "arose to combat it in Cromwell, the Roundheads, the Dis- 

 senters, the Covenanters. 



Yet sound learning was not to die that Christian truth might 

 live. Of the band of Pilgrims and Puritans that came first to our 

 shores, about one in thirty was college bred. While subordinating 

 book knowledge to piety, they had learned scarcely less the dan- 

 gers of ignorance. Their first college was founded because of " the 

 dread of having an illiterate ministry to the churches when our 

 ministers shall lie in dust." Charles Francis Adams says, in re- 

 gard to the establishment of Harvard College, " The records of 

 Harvard University show that, of all the presiding officers during 

 the century and a half of colonial days, but two were laymen, and 

 not ministers of the prevailing denomination." He further says 

 that " of all who in early times availed themselves of such ad- 

 vantages as this institution could ofl:'er, nearly half the number 

 did so for the sake of devoting themselves to the gospel. The 

 prevailing notion of the purpose of education was attended with 

 one remarkable consequence the cultivation of the female mind 

 was regarded with utter indifference." 



It was attended with still another remarkable consequence, 

 the effect of which is felt up to this hour. Only men who were 

 fitted for a profession were given a college education. It is well 

 within my memory when it began to be seriously said : " A col- 

 lege education is good for a boy, whether he intends to follow a 

 profession or not ; it will make him a better business man, or even 

 a better farmer." The country girl is now, as a rule, better edu- 

 cated than her brother. It also happened in those earlier days 

 that the artist and the musician were expected to attain knowl- 

 edge by intuition, save in technical branches. 



During the first two hundred years of our existence it would 

 have been almost absurd to expect that women would be exten- 

 sively educated outside the home. The country was poor, and 

 struggling with new conditions, and great financial crises swept 

 over it. There were wars and rumors of wars. Until after 1812- 

 '15 American independence was not an assured fact. Whatever 

 may be said of the present, woman's place in America then was 

 in the home, and nobly did she fill that place. That she had not 



