The opposition to the school throughout the district was strong and very general, among the old as well as the young. Even Walter Lenox, who, as mayor, when the school was first started, gave the teacher assurances of favor in her work, came out in 1857, following the prevailing current of depraved public sentiment and feeding its tide, in an elaborate article in the "National Intelligencer," under his own signature; assailed the school in open and direct language, urging against it that it was raising the standard of education among the Colored population, and distinctly declaring that the white population of the district would not be just to themselves to permit the continuance of an institution which had the temerity to extend to the Colored people "a degree of instruction so far beyond their social and political condition, which condition must continue," the article goes on to say, "in this and every other slave-holding community." This article, though fraught with extreme ideas, and to the last degree prescriptive and inflammatory, neither stirred any open violence, nor deterred the courageous woman in the slightest degree from her work. When madmen went to her school-room threatening her with personal violence, she laughed them to shame; and when they threatened to burn her house, she told them that they could not stop her in that way, as another house, better than the old, would immediately rise from its ashes. The house was set on fire in the spring of 1860, when Miss Miner was asleep in the second story, alone, in the night-time, but the smell of the smoke awakened her in time to save the building and herself from the flames, which were extinguished. The school-girls, also, were constantly at the mercy of coarse and insulting boys along the streets, who would often gather in gangs before the gate to pursue and terrify these inoffensive children, who were striving to gather wisdom and understanding in their little sanctuary. The police took no cognizance of such brutality in those days. But their dauntless teacher, uncompromising, conscientious, and self-possessed in her aggressive work, in no manner turned from her course by this persecution, was, on the other hand, stimulated thereby to higher vigilance and energy in her great undertaking. The course of instruction in the school was indeed of a higher order than had hitherto been opened to the Colored people of the district, as was denounced against the school by Walter Lenox, in his newspaper attack. Lectures upon scientific and literary subjects were given by professional and literary gentlemen, who were friends to the cause. The spacious grounds afforded to each pupil an ample space for a flower bed, which she was enjoined to cultivate with her own hands and to thoroughly study. And an excellent library, a collection of paintings and engravings, the leading magazines and choice newspapers, were gathered and secured for the humble home of learning, which was