Page:Women of distinction.djvu/391

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WOMEN OF DISTINCTION.
315

them are every way incompetent, and too few thoroughly qualified for this greatest of all sorts of American woman's work. But a larger number every 3-ear are doing better service, and a considerable class are so good that I never spend an hour in the school-room with one of them without feeling that the colored woman has a natural aptitude for teaching not yet half understood by her own people, but certain to make her a most powerful influence in the future of both races in the South. * * * Here is the providential furnishing in this native, loving kindness, unselfishness, endless patience, overflowing humor and sympathetic insight into child-nature for the office of teacher, with the added qualification of suitable education, moral stamina and the social refinements that come so easily to the colored woman.

Perhaps you ask, Cui bono? What are the results of this work on the part of our women? In reply we direct you to the Institute for Colored Youth in Philadelphia, where, for years, Mrs. Fannie Jackson Coppin, a woman known and honored on both sides of the Atlantic for nobility of character and scholarly attainments, has been the presiding genius, and where, as a result of her untiring efforts, successful preparatory, high, normal and industrial departments are conducted, the last mentioned having at least ten well-taught trades; to the Miner Normal School of Washington, D. C., which was for a long time very successfully managed by Miss Martha Briggs, and since by Miss Lucy Moten, under whose excellent guidance it has sustained its high reputation; to the Agassiz School of Cambridge, Mass., one of the best managed and equipped schools of the State, of which Miss Maria Baldwin is principal; to the many schools of the South Atlantic and South Central Divisions, and to the increasing number in all divisions of the United States, which have well-educated women of