Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. III.djvu/243

Rh and maternal mind of your Majesty these great and increasingly developing institutions for the education of the rising generation, which are open to the younger members of the entire community, and which are advantageous to the children of the indigent still more than to the children of the wealthy, and, together with this picture, that of the increasing importance of the young woman in society as the teacher, and that not alone in families and homes. I would present to your Majesty's view those large, cheerful school-rooms which are now to be met with in the public schools from Massachusetts to Wisconsin and Illinois, from New Hampshire to Ohio, where light and air obtain free access,—school-rooms full of lovely children with bright, animated glances, and where the young teachers, the daughters of New England, and the honour of New England, refined and graceful in manners and appearance, stand at the same time firmer to their principles than the earth's Alps and Andes on their foundations, and govern their troops of young republicans easier and better than any stern M.A. with thundering voice and ferule.

The youthful daughters of America in the Free States of the Union are not kept in ignorance and inactivity, as are still the greater number of the young girls of Europe. They are early taught that they must rely upon God and themselves, if they would win esteem and independent worth; they leave home early to enter the schools, where opportunity is afforded them to advance as far as young men in study and the sciences, and where they prove that the sciences which have hitherto been considered as too difficult for them, are as easy for them to acquire as that superficial knowledge and accomplishment to which hitherto their education has been restricted. They distinguish themselves in mathematics, algebra, the physical sciences, the ancient languages, at least in Latin, and many other hitherto interdicted branches of learning; and