Page:Letters of Life.djvu/329

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LAPSE OF YEARS.
317

cilitate the processes on which domestic comfort depend. To remove the contempt in which these are too often held by those whose sphere of action is eventually to comprehend them, and to prove that they are not inconsistent with advanced knowledge and refinement, were among the essential principles of the system of Miss Lyon. I said to her:

"You have convinced me of the practicability of what I viewed with doubt. But you have the power of inspiring the young with your own convictions and zeal, and I doubt whether the system can be thus carried out by another person."

"It can be equally well sustained by my teachers when I am no longer here," was her confident reply. The prediction seems to have been fulfilled.

The twenty-fifth anniversary of the institution has been recently celebrated by a joyous reunion. The published account of the festival states that more than three thousand have received instruction within its walls, under a band of one hundred and twenty-seven teachers, and that its existence is still vigorous and full of hope. As the piety inculcated both by word and deed by its founder, Miss Lyon, was of a zealous and self-denying character, a large proportion of its students have devoted themselves as teachers in our new Western States, and missionaries to benighted lands. Nearly one hundred have labored or fallen at their post of duty, either among our forest tribes, amid the snows of Lab-