Page:Sketches of representative women of New England.djvu/642

Rh Harvard and other colleges tiiat welcomed the boy graduates barred their doors against girls. Therefore the unfortunate girl was compelled to accept the resources of a seminary for young ladies.

An eager desire for the most fundamental mental training obtainable by girls led her, on the advice of a favorite teacher, to enter a State Normal School at West Newton. There she fount! what she sought as to quality of instruction. This pledged her to the work of teaching, which was altogether congenial to her. Directly after graduating, she was invited to take charge of the high school at South Brook- field, Mass. After two years she accepted a position in the Boston High and Normal School, where she remained several years. When Arttioch College in Ohio opened, under the leadership of the great educator and states- man, Horace Mann, he urged Miss Eastman and a classmate at the normal school to enter as pupils. Notwithstanding their high esteem for Horace Mann, the parents of Miss Eastman felt that Ohio was too far away. After she had become a teacher. President Mann invited her to come as instructor in the preparatory classes of the college, and she went to a most interesting work, with mature pupils, most of them by many years her seniors. She had a class of very interesting and loyal students. Here she remained till near the close of Horace Mann's noble life.

Antioch, like Oberlin, which preceded it, opened its doors, without restriction of race or sex, something hitherto unprecedented in history. But while Oberlin gave to women a motlified course, presuming, it seems, on only limited capacity in the female brain, or limited need that the sex should be much educatetl, Antioch, grown bolder and wiser, and with Horace Mann at its head, offered the same curriculum to all.

Says President George L. Gary, professor at Antioch and later President of the Meadville Theological School, "In the light of the expe- rience of the last forty years it need harilly be said that the women who responded to this welcome needed to have no concession made to their imagined inferiority."

He finely depicts Mr. Mann in these words: "The most striking characteristic of Mr. Mann'.s nature was his ethical passion. ... To feel that a thing was right, either for himself or others, was a challenge to its performance or to its earnest defence, if nothing else was possible, which he never allowed to go unheeded." To a young teacher, close association with so noble a nature as Horace Mann, and with those his fine instinct ilrew around him, may well be counted high privilege. Miss Eastman counts especially, among the many recognitions which she has so generously and so gratefully received, one from President Horace Mann, made shortly after her withdrawal from An- tioch College:

Minister Sarmiento, Representative of Buenos Ayres to the United States, advised President Mann of the desire of his government to im- prove its schools by the introduction of the most approved methods in use in the United States. He also asked him to suggest a suit- able person to conduct such a work. Presi- dent Mann wrote to Miss Eastman, to ask if she would meet Minister Sarmiento to con- sider with him the undertaking of such a work. Miss Eastman felt, however, that more maturity and wider experience than she possessed at the age of twenty-five were required, unless a considerable time could be allowed for due preparation; nor woukl her family consent to the wide separation involved in her going so far from home.

On returning to Lowell, she was given charge of the girls' department of the high school, numbering about two hundred pupils. After several years in this position she was invited to Meadville, Pa., as principal of a young lathes' seminary, endowed by the benefactions of the esteemed Huidekoper family. During seven years of her stay here she was the happy sharer of the home of Mr. and Mrs. Alfred Huitlekoper. One evening at a reception at the Unitarian Divinity School a group fell into a conversation which led to some consideration of woman suffrage. After the party was over, the students met, and voted to invite Miss Eastman to give her views on the subject more fully in their chapel, and appointed a committee to extend the invitation. A fine audience gathered, and this was her first public address.