world, the increase of art and refinements,—these have brought new ambitions and necessities that can only be met through higher education.
A comparison of woman's condition at the opening and the close of the nineteenth century in educational affairs alone would show the truth of Victor Hugo's prediction. In the time of Hannah More it was unwomanly to learn Latin; eighty years ago Sidney Smith tried to reassure the readers of the Edinburgh Review that womanly qualities did not really depend on ignorance of Greek and Latin, and that "a woman might even learn mathematics without forsaking her infant for a quadratic equation." It was once unwomanly to write a book and had electric cars existed it would have been unwomanly to ride in one,—as it actually was in a hansom cab.
In our country at the beginning of the nineteenth century it was generally assumed that intellectual matters did not concern woman. No colleges for her existed, though I believe there were twenty-four for men; girls had no high schools, and grammar schools in cities were open to them under restrictions.
One of the earliest pioneers in establishing a girl's seminary was Miss Willard, who laid her plans before President Monroe in 1819, and her address reads today as a wise presentation of the needs of a republic for trained womanhood. Miss Willard conducted her school in Troy, N. Y., for seventeen years with great success. Then another pioneer, Mary Lyon, recognizing that women must be fitted if a nation would prosper, inspired both men and women to believe that knowledge and character must be at the foundation of woman's influence. In 1837 Mt. Holyoke Seminary was established in Massachusetts. The influence of Mary Lyon still lives in devoted teachers, seminaries, and colleges all over our country. Who can estimate the debt of womanhood in the Northwest to
