ests, the bane of so many
high-priced schools.

These classes are held in the evening from seven to nine o'clock, and
are intended for ladies above the age of fifteen years, who may be
engaged through the day in various occupations, and for such as suffer
from neglected education, and who wish conveniently and economically to
improve themselves, without being necessitated to mix with their juniors
in day-schools. These classes prepare ladies to meet the qualifications
necessary to enter clerkships and other official departments; to bring
them also to a standard to meet the qualifications for post offices and
telegraph departments; and also to pass certain examinations open to
them. The charge is only _2s._ per week--_8s._ per month--_1l. 4s._ per
quarter. The first course embraces spelling, reading, writing,
arithmetic, history, geography, and grammar. The second course consists
of advanced arithmetic, book-keeping and commercial instruction, so as
to qualify women to take posts of responsibility with marked success.
The third course consists of French, for practical usefulness. The
fourth course embraces simple or technical training in such departments
as are available within the limits of the class-room--to qualify women
to enter industrial avocations with competency, and to make them
successful in obtaining employment. This department will be extended to
greater usefulness as conveniences arise, by apprenticing the girls or
employing them directly in trades beyond the limits of the class-room,
where employers will receive them, or where women could be consistently
engaged--as, for instance, in the work of compositors, ticket-writers,
embossers, &c. &c.

The two classes with which I was brought into contact were the
book-keeping and embossing. In the former, more than a dozen young
ladies were being initiated in the mysteries of single and double entry,
and they posted up their books in a way that made me feel very much
ashamed of myself, when I thought how incapable I should be of doing
anything half so useful. Many girls go from this department to be
book-keepers at large hotels, places of business, &c.

I then went to the embossing room, where six presses were being worked
by as many young ladies, one in an adjoining room being reserved for
Mrs. Fernando, who not only tells her pupils what to do, but shows them
how to do it. The gilding and colouring of the stamps was most
elaborate; two monograms of the Queen's