husiastic and
grateful friends.

The first meeting of Margaret's Conversation Class was held at Miss
Peabody's rooms, in West Street, Boston, on the 6th of November, 1839.
Twenty-five ladies were present, who showed themselves to be of the
elect by their own election of a noble aim. These were all ladies of
superior position, gathered by a common interest from very various
belongings of creed and persuasion. At this, their first coming
together, Margaret prefaced her programme by some remarks on the
deficiencies in the education given to women, defects which she thought
that later study, aided by the stimulus of mutual endeavor and
interchange of thought, might do much to remedy. Her opening remarks are
as instructive to-day as they were when she uttered them:--

"Women are now taught, at school, all that men are. They run over,
superficially, even _more_ studies, without being really taught
anything. But with this difference: men are called on, from a very early
period, to reproduce all that they learn. Their college exercises, their
political duties, their professional studies, the first actions of life
in any direction, call on them to put to use what they have learned. But
women learn without any attempt to reproduce. Their only reproduction is
for purposes of display. It is to supply this defect that these
conversations have been planned."

Margaret had chosen the Greek Mythology for the subject of her first
conversations. Her reasons for this selection are worth remembering:--

"It is quite separated from all exciting local subjects. It is serious
without being solemn, and without excluding any mode of intellectual
action; it is playful as well as deep. It is sufficiently wide, for it
is a complete expression of the cultivation of a nation. It is also
generally known, and associated with all our ideas of the arts."

In considering this statement it is not difficult for us at this day to
read, as people say, between the lines. The religious world of
Margaret's youth was agitated by oppositions which rent asunder the
heart of Christendom. Margaret wished to lead her pupils beyond all
discord, into the high and happy unity. Her own nature was both fervent
and religious, but she could not accept intolerance either in belief or
in disbelief. To study with her friends the ethics of an ancient faith,
too remote to become the occasion of personal excitement, seemed to her
a step in the direction of freer thought and