Municipal History of
Boston,"[2] that from 1790 girls were there admitted to such schools, but
during the summer months only, when there were not boys enough to fill
them,--from April 20 to October 20 of each year. This lasted until 1822,
when Boston became a city. Four years after, an attempt was made to
establish a high school for girls, which was not, however, to teach Latin
and Greek. It had, in the words of the school committee of 1854, "an
alarming success;" and the school was abolished after eighteen months'
trial, because the girls crowded into it; and as Mr. Quincy, with exquisite
simplicity, records, "not one voluntarily quitted it, and there was no
reason to suppose that any one admitted to the school would voluntarily
quit for the whole three years, except in case of marriage!"

How amusing seems it now to read of such an "experiment" as this, abandoned
only because of its overwhelming success! How absurd now seem the
discussions of a few years ago!--the doubts whether young women really
desired higher education, whether they were capable of it, whether their
health would bear it, whether their parents would permit it. An address I
gave before the Social Science Association on this subject, at Boston, May
14, 1873, now seems to me such a collection of platitudes that I hardly see
how I dared come before an intelligent audience with such needless
reasonings. It is as if I had soberly labored to prove that two and two
make four, or that ginger is "hot i' the mouth." Yet the subsequent
discussion in that meeting showed that around even these harmless and
commonplace propositions the battle of debate could rage hot; and it really
seemed as if even to teach women the alphabet ought still to be mentioned
as "a promising experiment." Now, with the successes before us of so many
colleges; with the spectacle at Cambridge of young women actually reading
Plato "at sight" with Professor Goodwin,--it surely seems as if the higher
education of women might be considered quite beyond the stage of
experiment, and might henceforth be provided for in the same common-sense
and matter-of-course way which we provide for the education of young men.

And, if this point is already reached in education, how long before it will
also be reached in political life, and women's voting be viewed as a matter
of course, and a thing no longer experimental?

[Footnote 1: Vol. iii. 323.]

[Footnote 2: Page 21.]

INTELLECTUAL CINDERELL