eventeen years of age. They were the best audience I ever had.
Among them was not one, who did not appear to be intelligent and
thoughtful, and with a mind more or less disciplined. But there were
perceptible differences among them, and it is to this point that I would
direct your attention. They were divided into four distinct classes,
having attended the School severally one, two, three, and four years,
and they were arranged before me in the order of their seniority as
classes. The discourse was long and didactic, and portions of it were
not easy to follow, containing a discussion of a rather abstruse point
in mental philosophy. Now it seemed to me, on concluding the address,
that I could have gone through that assembly, and marked with tolerable
accuracy, class by class, just where each class ended and another class
began, simply by what I had read in the faces of my young auditors. It
was written as plainly upon those upturned faces, as was the discourse
itself upon the manuscript before me. Those who had been four years in
the School, undoubtedly learned manifold more from the exercise than
the junior classes did. I could see it in the delivery of every
paragraph. Such is the uniform result of a proper course of study. It
enables the student to grasp new truths with increased ease and
readiness. We, who are teachers, feel this the moment we undertake to
communicate our thoughts to an audience. The consequence is, we
involuntarily measure what has been done educationally for a class of
young persons, by the development which has been given to their
powers,--by the manifest facility which they have gained for making
further gains. That young woman is best educated who is best prepared to
learn.

Let me, then, renew the appeal to your own consciousness. Think for a
moment upon the change which has been wrought in your own self during
your career here. Compare your present self with that other self that
you may remember some three or four years back. How much more you can
accomplish now than you could then! How much more clearly you can follow
out a train of reasoning! How much more easily you can compass an
argument! How much more you can enjoy what is beautiful! How much more
quickly and accurately you can remember! How much more you can command
your attention! Whence this change, and what does it purport? It means
that you are educated. You have now a degree of mental power that you
had not then. Your own conscious