172 WISCONSIN ACADEMY SCIElirCES, ARTS, AXD LETTERS. 



bast to make the most of conditions found. Even the injustice of 

 her legal status may be glossed over by the assumption that the 

 responsibilities of equality would overbalance its additional secu- 

 rity. Sach conclusions are compatible with a rather fair estimate 

 of women taken out of the intricacies of relations which it is diffi- 

 cult to estimate. But that direct education, which is neither for 

 public nor professional service, comes to woman with a denial of 

 the right to it or capacity for it. If one could lay upon the page, 

 or place before the eye, a picture representing the hemispheres of 

 time occupied by men and women respectively, and touch them 

 with light and shade, according to the measure of education that 

 has been furnished each, the eye might help the mind in gaining a 

 conception of the extent to which woman has been denied a know- 

 ledge of herself and of the world in which she lives. But Art has 

 not the gift, as eloquence has been in vain, to arouse man to the 

 wrong of denying to woman an equal share in whatever education 

 can give as a preparation for life. Because there is a diff'erpnce be- 

 tween the present and the practice of earliest times, it is not to be 

 lost sight of that the difference in the opportunities afforded young 

 men and women respectively, has not been diminished in propor- 

 tion to general educational advancement; so that it remains, to the 

 dishonor of all time and countries. Using again the language of 

 Horace Mann, " In estimating the number of heroic souls who 

 have languished out their lives in dungeon cells, or fallen beneath 

 the axe of the oppressor, we count by hundreds and by thousands; 

 in summing up the multitudes whom conquerors have subjugated 

 and enslaved, v/e count by nations and races of men; but, in enu- 

 merating the women whom man has visited with injustice and per- 

 sistent wrong in the rights of education, we express ourselves b}^ a 

 unit, but that unit is the world. And this, notwithstanding that 

 human reason seeks in vain for a reason why there should be this 

 difference of education and no education between the sexes."' 



It is incredible that women have not been taking note of these 

 things through much time of both experience and retrospect; and 

 that they are not more moved to protest and revolution to-day, in 

 the flush of modern enlightment, than when abiding in the thicker 

 darkness of the past. Nor is it wonderful that this revolution, 

 having its root a,nd furtherance in the English-speaking countries, 

 where progress has done the most for men, should find just here, 



