's_, _holdin'_ office," etc. Mrs. Fisher had been a
teacher for six years. Mrs. Shirley, another successful teacher,
accompanied Mrs. Fisher to the next school meeting, and both
ladies voted on all questions that came up for action, and
nothing was said against their doing so.

This year (1885) the school board of Des Moines elected Mrs. Lou.
M. Wilson to the office of city superintendent of public schools,
with a salary of $1,800 a year. She has in charge eighty
teachers, among whom are two men in the position of principals.
At the woman's congress, held at Des Moines in October, 1885, Dr.
Jennie McCowen, in her report for this State, said:

An increasing number of women have been elected on
school-boards, and are serving as officers and county
superintendents of schools. Last year six women served as
presidents, thirty-five as secretaries, and fifty as
treasurers of school-boards. Of the superintendents and
principals of graded schools about one in five is a woman;
of county superintendents, one in nine; of teachers in
normal institutes, one in three; of principals of secondary
institutions of learning, one in three; of tutors and
instructors in colleges, one in two; and in the twenty-three
higher institutions of learning, thirteen young women are
officiating as professors, and in three of these colleges
the secretary of the faculty is a woman. The State board of
examiners has one woman--Miss Ella A. Hamilton of Des
Moines--and the State superintendent of public instruction
has for a number of years availed himself of the valued
services of a woman for private secretary. The _Northwestern
Educational Journal_ is edited by a woman. At the last
meeting of the State Teachers' Association a committee was
appointed to prepare a regular course of reading for
teachers. This course is mainly professional and literary,
with a leaning toward the latter. A large number of these
reading circles have already been organized, and much
interest, and even enthusiasm, is being manifested by
teachers in all parts of the State. The school of Domestic
Economy, in connection with the Agricultural College, is in
charge of a