Page:Women of distinction.djvu/341

Rh charge of a school with an increase of $15 per month in salary. The work in the office of the General Superintendent being very burdensome, in reviewing each teacher's record-book for the year so as to insure accurate statistics, many of the best teachers were detailed at the end of each year to assist in this work. In 1873, Miss Coakley was among the number thus chosen, and her efficiency and fondness for the work so pleased the Superintendent of Public Instruction that he asked the Board of Trustees to detail her indefinitely for clerical work in his office. His request was unhesitatingly granted, and she served in the Superintendent's office for twelve long years, and severed her connection with the public schools of the District of Columbia at the close of the school year in June, 1885. The opportunity for meeting people from every land and clime while acting as assistant to the Superintendent of the Public Schools for twelve years was great and did much to broaden her ideas of life and of men as well as of women. The cares of a home to be maintained for an aged mother and a still more aged grandmother rendered it quite hard for her to let go the hold which she had upon the then incoming salary which she was then earning that she might continue her studies. Many a time she resolved to borrow sufficient money to keep herself in school and at the same time keep her home going. But Ben Franklin's "He who goes a borrowing goes a sorrowing," which she had been taught during her tender years, deterred her.

But the Chautauqua idea caught her attention, and