were reading to a
lady-teacher an oration of Demosthenes in classic Greek. Another class
was reading critically a portion of Milton's "Paradise Lost," and yet
another was engaged in preparing a French lesson. With all these classes
the lady sister spoke in the language under study or recitation, as did
the teachers of each class, with the exception of the Greek class, in
which, the sister said, the pupils were taught to read the classic
Greek, but allowed to speak the language as now spoken, as they had many
pupils to whom this was their native tongue; but they ought to be able
to read the works of their great men of another age. In another
department I heard the same sister speak most beautiful German. This
was her native tongue. Italian was also taught, and I heard it fluently
spoken. It seemed to me that their course, though different, required
nearly as much study as ours.

At the hotel, where I remained ten days, I made the acquaintance of two
young ladies, of Greek and Armenian parentage. They had been in this
school for several years and were still pursuing their studies. They
spoke half a dozen languages, English, they said, the most imperfectly
of any, but I have never seen an American girl who spoke French or
German, when she graduated, as well as these girls spoke English, and
their drill in music was quite as severe as that of American girls. They
were taught arithmetic, but not to the extent that girls are in our
schools. Physiology was also a part of their course. They were not so
unctuously fat as many of the entirely idle women of the harems, whose
object in life is to "sit," but to us, who are wont to call that a
"well-developed form" which would seem to adapt its owner to do
something in life, rather than to sit an existence through, their
physiques would indicate more vigorous health than those of the "grave
Turk's wifely crowd," which Dr. Clarke wished he could marry to the
"brain-culture" of our women. Their faces were still "rich with the
blood and sun of the East," and I should pity the American who could
find a loss in the exchange of the "unintelligent, sensuous faces" of
the harem drones for the soul-light which, through brain-culture, beamed
from the eyes of these Oriental young women.

In this school they had advanced to an innovation beyond anything to
which the teachers had been themselves trained in Europe--quite beyond
anything in the East, even the mission schools--the experiment of
c