s
sounds from the room where boys were taking their first lessons in
Talmudic law and lore, and had gratified her curiosity by learning what
they meant. "It whistled itself," averred the little school-boy,
apologetically, under fear of the rod; so she, another _it_, learned
itself.

It was not until the steps of other little maidens were also tending
towards school, that the gravity of her transgression, and the danger
of the innovation, were at all comprehended. Then there was indeed an
excitement among the orthodox Samaritans. In the opinion of the staunch
appellants to the Law and the Prophets, she had transcended the
limitations of her sex, and the marital claim, "My wife is my shoe" was
ominously threatened. Sychar had not been so roused for ages. The
scribes and prophets waited in expectancy to see fire from heaven
descend upon a city where such things had been suffered, or to see the
young transgressor transformed, by the judgments of heaven, out of the
proper semblance of womanhood. But when she appeared in the streets,
with her sister maidens, performed her appointed tasks in rank and file
with them, talked and chatted as heretofore--though perhaps gossiped
less--and bore her pitcher as deftly on her head as ever, the matter
began to die away, and she was only pointed out as the one who had
_first_ sinned. True, the High Priest shook his head and prophesied "The
end is not yet." But the fire had caught, and, according to the laws of
fire, physical or Promethean, it spread, until between the mountains of
blessing and cursing, a dozen Samaritan girls had learned the alphabet.

How far education has advanced in Sychar, what has been its effects upon
the health of Samaritan women, or how much it has shaken the social
basis, "My wife is my shoe," I have had no very late opportunities for
learning; but, judging from the effects of learning the alphabet in
other places, I cannot doubt that this innovation, seeing it did not
precipitate the world out of its course, has been followed by others,
less startling, perhaps, but tending the same way. Be this as it may,
this initiate of an educational revolution in Sychar has its lessons for
our times.

The Rabbis of the old Samaritan capital saw in this unlooked for seizure
of the key of knowledge by the hand of a woman, a second fall, and to
them the world again gave "signs of woe that all was lost." This
Miltonian cry of woe to the world, through knowledge or privilege g