Page:Our Sister Republic - Mexico.djvu/134

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128
THE GIRL'S HIGH SCHOOL.

erty to the State of Jalisco, for educational purposes. We found here two hundred and thirty girls from the age of twelve to twenty years, all bright, intelligent and happy looking. Those able to do so pay ten dollars per month, or one hundred and twenty dollars per year, and those who are not, (they comprise a majority of the pupils) pay nothing. For this they receive instruction in all the studies usually pursued in the higher schools in the United States, vocal and instrumental music, object drawing, all the fine arts, embroidery, lace-making, and, better still, cooking, washing, ironing, and other household duties. They all board in the building—board being included in the ten dollars per month—and take turns in doing the work in each department, that all may know how to do such work well. Brighter and happier faces I never saw around me.

We visited all the departments, from kitchen to fine art gallery, and found that all of the teachers were native Mexicans, male and female, mostly young, and educated in the country. The pupils usually belong to the best Republican families of the State; but the highest and lowest, richest and poorest, fairest and darkest, are all admitted on the same terms of equality. When they graduate they are fitted for teachers in the public schools, or for housekeeping, or the various trades.

We saw in the embroidery room, lace-work and embroidery in silk, cotton and bullion of the most exquisite fineness and delicacy. Some of the linen handkerchiefs, worked with portraits of Lincoln, Juarez and Zarragosa, in black silk floss, were equal in delicacy and accuracy to the best steel engravings, and the copies of oil paintings in silk embroidery, were perfect fac-simi-