Catherine’s scheme was indeed an ambitious one. It included a young ladies’ school for fifty or sixty pupils, with a primary department for about the same number of little girls, and also a primary school for little boys. These were to be the practice schools in her scheme for the training of teachers, exactly as we conduct our normal schools to-day. The school work was to be on the basis of that in a college; and they believed so thoroughly in woman’s teaching power, that they thought instruction in this country would never be well done until women were trained directly for that service. This was what these two young educators intended to do--to train perfect teachers for schools that were sure to arise and that were already sadly needed all over the central west and, indeed, throughout the country. They cherished the thought that women by their motherly instincts and by the qualities that housewifely lore and home-making and family life had fixed in the very fiber of their being, would be specially adapted to the work of teachers. The outcome in the next few decades of our national life proves not only that these two young theorists were able to look over the whole situation in the country and to see what was most needed and the best means to attain the desired ends, but also that they were far-sighted as to what the future was sure to bring forth. For the New England migration was to pass over the vast space of the prairies of all our middle states, making possible everywhere schools in which almost the whole burden of the work was to fall to the hands of women. They saw that the gigantic burden of subduing the land was to be the special work of men. It turned out to be so. They saw that men of tact, versatility, talent, and piety, as Harriet put it, qualities absolutely necessary to successful teaching, would be constantly called away to missionary and ministerial and patriotic duties. If such a man were put to the work of teaching, he would be, said Harriet Beecher, like a Hercules with a distaff in hand ready to spring at the first call of the trumpet. The question of salaries also came in, for a man must have enough to support wife and family. But we can hardly realize how it seemed in 1832 when two young women urged forward the idea that if young women were to be well prepared for the work of teaching, were to be placed in responsible positions and were to devote themselves to this work, adequate provision really must be made for their support. Catherine spent a good part of her life and wrote chapters in her books maintaining that side by side with the many well-endowed institutions for men, there should be also a well-endowed provision for the education of women. Those days were not so very long ago; but things have happened at a wild rate since then. Yet Catherine Beecher has by no means had her meed of praise for the work she did in training the public mind toward the good things that we now take for granted almost