Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 53.djvu/525

Rh colleges seems quite right and proper; but think of the thrill of surprise and dismay which would fill the breasts of the mothers of this land should a lady, young and attractive, be appointed to train the masculine mind at Yale or Harvard!

On women lawyers we still look askance, at least in the Eastern States, and despite the attractions of some of the female divines, it will be "long after to-day" before women clergymen, a strangely contradictory term, win any large or enthusiastic following.

The fact remains that, with all our boasted progress and enlightenment, our age is much behind the past, and for a perfect type of the "new woman" we must go back to Miriam, the sister of Moses. She was no shrinking creature, hiding her light under a bushel; an accomplished musician and a poetess, she dared to assert herself, and to lead the Israelites with timbrels and with dances in their song of triumph upon the overthrow of Pharaoh and his horsemen in the Red Sea. She was also, so says tradition, learned in the sciences, and invented the bain-Marie, the double boiler of our kitchens, which still bears her name. She was an authoress as well, and wrote a practical treatise on alchemy which is still extant. She was a true woman in her love of gossip, and was most severely punished for "evil speaking, lying, and slandering," when she and Aaron expressed their opinion of their sister-in-law, the Ethiopian wife of Moses.

In 1894, Monsieur Rebière, a French mathematician, delivered a lecture entitled Les Femmes dans la Science, which was published in a small pamphlet of eighty-seven pages; this brochure he recently enlarged into a work of three hundred and fifty-nine pages, including more than six hundred names of women more or less distinguished in scientific pursuits. It is true that in order to swell the number the writer has included some names on insufficient grounds, and others about which he has no definite information; but the greater part of the book consists of short, well-written biographies, giving interesting and valuable insight into the lives of the women of all ages and countries who have made useful discoveries or profound studies in the various branches of science.

Although M. Rebière has omitted Miriam from his long list, we find sufficient details concerning women of ancient and mediæval times to convince us that the wearing of blue stockings is by no means a modern fashion. 'Nor are those who adopt the azure hose always the unattractive and elderly; on the contrary, their portraits show them to have been very fair to look upon. Indeed, so lovely was the beautiful Novella d' Andrea, the daughter of a professor of law at the University of Bologna in the fourteenth century, that when she took her father's classes she was obliged to lecture behind