o'clock in the
morning. In very early morning walks, I have often met scores of German
children, with their little soldier-like knapsack of books strapped to
their shoulders, and have stopped them to examine their school-books,
and inquire about their schools. In a little valley in Switzerland,
seeing a bevy of children starting, so many in one direction, before it
was light in the morning, I inquired where all those children were
going. "To the school, to be sure," I was answered. "But they cannot see
to read or study," I said. "_O, sie muessen Licht mitnehmen_" (they must
take a light with them), was the reply.

* * * * *

Our modes of education will be changed; there are defects to be
remedied, evils to be cured, which affect both sexes; but women will be
educated. All the tendencies of the age are towards a higher
intellectual culture for them. Women's clubs, classes, library and
literary associations, are, throughout our cities and villages--in
little country neighborhoods, even--furnishing women with means of
intellectual growth and advancement. There is no more marked feature of
the age than these associations. The Babe of Bethlehem is born, and has
even now too far escaped the search of Herod to be overtaken.

Nor is there anything in the spirit of the times which betokens the
revival of the nunnery and monastic systems. Women already tread almost
every avenue of honest thrift and business, unchallenged. The shrines of
Minerva will not be desecrated by their presence. Their intellect will
be developed, and their affections will be cultivated, and all truly
womanly virtues fostered in the innermost penetralia even, of that
temple where all wisdom, and all art, and all science, are taught; whose
patron deity was prophetically made by a mythology, wise beyond its own
ken, not a man, not a god--but a goddess, a typical woman.

As surely as girls persistently breathe the same air their brothers
breathe, eat and drink as they do, go with them to church, public
lectures, concerts, plays, and social entertainments, so will they, in
the new and more truly Christian era that is dawning, come, more and
more, to study with them, from youth to old age, in the academy, the
sacred groves of philosophy, halls of science, schools of
theology--everywhere and "persistently."

LUCINDA H. STONE.

Kalamazoo, Mich.

GIRLS AND WOMEN

IN

ENGLAND AND AMERICA.

GIRLS AND WOMEN

I