w--and
knew that the rest knew--that it was (to use the Andover phraseology)
not of predestination or foreordination, but of free will absolute,
that an Andover girl passed through life alone. This little social
fact, which is undoubtedly true of most, if not all, university towns,
had mingled effects upon impressionable girls. For the proportion of
masculine society was almost Western in its munificence.

Perhaps it is my duty to say just here that, if honestly put to
the question, I should admit that this proportion was almost too
munificent for the methods of education then--and still to an extent
now--in vogue.

A large Academy for boys, and a flourishing Seminary for young men,
set across the village streets from two lively girls' schools, gave
to one observer of this little scholastic world her first argument for
co-education.

I am confident that if the boys who serenaded (right manfully) under
the windows of Abbott Academy or of "The Nunnery," or who tied
their lady's colors to the bouquets that they tossed on balconies of
professors' houses, had been put, class to class, in competition with
us, they would have wasted less time upon us; and I could not deny
that if the girls who cut little holes in their fans through which one
could look, undetected and unreproved, at one's favorite Academy boy,
on some public occasion, had been preparing to meet or pass that boy
at Euclid or Xenophon recitation next morning, he would have occupied
less of their fancy. Intellectual competition is simpler, severer, and
more wholesome than the unmitigated social plane; and a mingling of
the two may be found calculated to produce the happiest results.

"Poor souls!" said a Boston lady once to me, upon my alluding to a
certain literary club which was at that time occupying the enthusiasm
of the Hill. "Poor souls! I suppose they are so starved for society!"
We can fancy the amusement with which this comment would have been
received if it had been repeated--but it never was repeated till this
moment--in Andover.

For Andover had her social life, and knew no better, for the most
part, than to enjoy it. It is true that many of her diversions took on
that religious or academic character natural to the place. Of village
parish life we knew nothing, for our chapel was, like others of its
kind, rather an exclusive little place of worship. We were ignorant
of pastoral visits, deacons, parochial gossip, church fairs, and what
Professor