good-tempered, while the mothers
are portrayed as awkward, dowdy, stupid, and ill-educated, though honest
and kind. We resent the distortion of this picture, for in America, as
elsewhere, girls are largely what they are made by their mothers, yet we
do have certain conditions which make sharp contrasts between mothers
and daughters more common here than elsewhere.

This is especially so in the present generation, for the last fifty
years have been a transition period in woman's education. Before that,
there were no good schools for girls in America, though the country
academies did what they could; and in a few of the large cities there
was a small class of wealthy people who had private teachers for their
girls in music, French, dancing, and perhaps literature.

Then came the establishment of high-class boarding schools for girls, so
endowed that they were within the reach of people of moderate means. The
eager, ambitious, half-educated mothers sent their bright daughters to
these schools. The best class of girls from the country towns everywhere
now met each other, and mingled, too, with many girls who had had the
opportunities of city life. The teachers in these schools were women of
high character and real refinement, and though they were not all
accustomed to the usages of society, there were always some among them
who were so, and who gave a certain finish to the solid work of the
others. The advantages of these boarding-school girls were so far beyond
those of the previous generation that the line between mothers and
daughters became abnormally broad. The son had advantages at college
which his father had not, but after all, he went to the same college,
and the progress was natural.

Then the high schools were opened to girls, and thousands were able to
get a fair education whose mothers had had no opportunities whatever.
And then about thirty years ago, colleges for women sprang up, and the
young women of our day have the same advantages as the young men.

Mothers must always, of course, expect to be outstripped in some
directions by their daughters. Indeed, they wish to have it so, for they
wish to have their daughters stand on as high ground as possible; but
when the process goes on as rapidly as it has done through the wonderful
opening of the means of education in the last half century, it has a
painful side. Especially is it so in this country, where there is such a
spirit of equality that in spite of a