in her husband's office. Last July she ap plied to the Corporation Judge of Danville for the necessary certificate to enable her to be examined for admission to the bar, but her application was refused on the ground that a special statute would have to be enacted before a woman could be admitted to prac tise law in that State. Mr. and Mrs. Smith propose to lay the matter before the Legis lature this December, and possibly before this article gets to press news may ar rive that the desired legislation has been enacted. Widely different from the decision of the Virginia judge just referred to was that of the Supreme Court of the neighboring State of North Carolina, in 1878, when Miss Tabitha A. Holton, of Dobson in that State, appeared before them for examination and admission to the bar. Miss Holton (as a letter from her brother, with whom she was afterwards associated in practice, informs me), having lost her mother in early childhood, was thrown much into the com pany of her brothers (three of whom are now practising attorneys in North Carolina), and with them she read law under the in struction of their father, the Rev. Quinton Holton. Her taste for the study grew with what it fed on; and no obstacle was put in her way, for the court examined her, and on the 8th of January, 1878, duly granted her a license. She practised in association with her brother, Samuel L. Holton, de voting herself chiefly to office work, until a short time before her death, which occurred in June, 1886. There can be no better place than the present, perhaps, in which to speak of the other State in which is now pending an application by a woman for admission to the bar. The North and the South march together in this, for the State that is keep ing step with Virginia is New Hampshire, — or perhaps I should rather say that the two States are running a race, which shall first admit the woman who has applied for a license to practise law.
Mrs. Marilla M. Ricker, of Dover, N. H., has for a number of years been a resident of the District of Columbia, where she was admitted to the bar in May, 1882, after four years' study in a law office. She was in practice there until some three years since, appearing as counsel in some important cases, — among them the famous Star Route trial, where she represented Dorsey, one of the defendants, and the test case whether a barber could keep open shop on Sunday. She was appointed commissioner and ex aminer in Chancery by the Supreme Court of the District, and several cases were heard before her. Her special interest, however, is in the defence of criminals, and she has been known as "the prisoners' friend." On Mrs. Ricker's return to her home in New Hampshire recently, she made application for admission to the bar there. Her peti tion came up for a hearing before the Su preme Court of that State, a few days pre vious to the present writing, and she made an argument in support of her brief, followed by myself on a point of construction which she had not fully covered. The court re served the question for consideration, but a decision may be looked for at any time. Her argument for admission rests chiefly on the decision upon the similar application of Miss Hall of Connecticut in 1882, which will be referred to later on; and the princi pal obstacle in her way is the unfavorable Massachusetts decision in my own case in 1881. Among other prominent law schools which do not admit women as students are those of Harvard, Columbia, and Yale. One woman, however, does wear the honors of the de gree of Bachelor of Laws as conferred by Yale. This is Miss Alice R. Jordan, now Mrs. Blake, who, after a year of study in the law school of Michigan University and admission to the bar of Michigan in June, 1885, entered the law school at Yale in the fall of the same year, and graduated at the close of the course with the degree as al ready stated. Since that time she has mar
