, the work of a profession, or house-work, by breathing into it the
living spirit of love, which sanctifies and ennobles whatever the hands
or the brain find to do.

As regards different methods of education and their results, the old New
England Academies may furnish some useful lessons. These began to be
established from fifty to seventy-five years ago, and are now mostly
displaced by Union and High Schools. But they were the initiate of a
very important revolution in the status of the education of girls. In
their earliest educational plans, our fathers had not taken their girls
much into account. But these academies, though not planned with any
special reference to giving the girls of the New England villages and
the rural districts the opportunities of education, at once established
a system of co-education, where the girls and the young men met on terms
of as entire equality as any co-educational plan has ever since
contemplated. The academy edifice was most frequently built by voluntary
subscription from persons of all religious sects, and the school was in
charge of trustees, so chosen as to avoid any sectarian bias or rivalry
in its management. The building generally crowned some hill, or stood in
the midst of a grove where spacious grounds could be obtained. The
school was usually under charge of a gentleman teacher--some college
graduate--and a lady assistant. The course of study, aside from a course
designed to fit young men for college, was largely elective. These
schools were as perfect educational republics as can be imagined. The
young men and the young women met in their classes, on terms of entire
equality and respect for each other. There were few rules in the school,
and as to government, the pupils were mostly put upon their honor. The
course of study was frequently identical, and with the exception of the
Greek--sometimes the Latin--designed to fit young men for
college--largely so.

My own course was precisely that of the young men in every study, though
Greek, to which I was persuaded by my minister, led me through a cruel
martyrdom of jokes from my companions. Repeating at school what their
mothers said at home, they even then satirized me with proposals to get
up petitions to open the doors of our State University to girls "who
wanted to be men" I felt these jokes so keenly, that at first I pursued
my study of Greek covertly, reciting out of school. But, cheered by my
minister's encouragement,