Page:Portland, Oregon, its History and Builders volume 1.djvu/534

384 Proudly pacing up the hallways, Let's retrace the merry scenes ; How we've met As fellow schoolmates, And with sympathizing aid, How we have hailed success with gladness. Wide dispelling sorrow's shade.

III

Ere we part at life's broad gateway, We will breathe a last farewell ; Tho' "commingled joy and gladness" On our group may fondly dwell. Let us clasp In kindly feeling Hands with hearty friendship fraught; May we stand Through every conflict, Then look back on work well wrought.

Prof. Crawford in his historical sketch refers to the organization of the night school in 1863; and says it was closed April i, 1874; and that Prof. Johnson received $200 for his services in connection therewith. From this statement it is a reasonable presumption that the first attempt to establish a night school was a failure.

But there was a demand for a night school, and the failure of Prof. Johnson was not accepted as then end of the matter. One of the first propositions that the Portland Woman's Union took up after its organization was a night school for working girls who had not had the opportunities for school book education. Twelve years after the professors and teachers of the public schools, and the directors of the school district had shuffled off the duty of doing something for education of these girls, the Woman's Union, on November 22, 1886, organized a night school for the benefit of the wage earning girls of Portland. Of that school, Miss Mary E. Cook now the wife of Dr. Samuel K. Brown, was appointed superintendent, and with that noble commission, told to do the best she could for the girls. No appointment to a high trust was ever more fortunately made. Schooled to all the responsibilities of life, and with a genuine interest in the girls assigned to her charge, the night school was a great success from its first opening. Miss Cook not only taught the girls herself in all the elementary branches of common school work, but she opened her own home to accommodate the sessions of the school.

But no sooner had the women made a success of the night school for girls, than the wage earning boys began to clamor for like opportunities. The doors were not shut in the face of the ambitious boys, but opened wide as long as the limited accommodations for class rooms could hold another boy. And in what the directors of the school district and its highly paid superintendent made a dismal and discreditable failure, the women made greatly to their credit, a glorious success.

And now in 1886, there was a most capable woman at the head of the city schools—Miss Ella Sabin. She was equal to her opportunities and the responsibilities of the occasion, and heartily sympathizing with the work accomplished by the night school, she, together with Mrs. M. S. Burrell, president of the Woman's Union, and Miss Cook, superintendent of the school, succeeded in making the directors of the district adopt the night schools as a part of the public school system of Portland.