Modern female education in Siam may be said to have begun when the newly crowned King Mongkut, in August, 1851, requested the ladies of the several missions to come to the palace in turns for the purpose of instructing some of the royal ladies. This was five years before Mrs. House reached Siam. The intention of the king, as he expressed it, was to qualify the ladies of the palace to converse with him in English. The effect of this royal patronage of female education was not only to break the bondage of custom which held women in perpetual ignorance but to quicken popular interest in the mission school. Though Mrs. House promptly enlisted in assisting her husband in the school for boys, her greatest sympathy was with the girls of Siam. From the first she sought to reach out toward them, making her first point of contact by a class in English Bible. As she came to perceive the age-long inheritance of ignorance that impoverished the successive generations of Siamese women she was kindled with a desire to share with them the heritage of Christian women. This lack of education she pictures: “When we first went to Siam not one woman or little girl in ten could read, although all the boys are taught by the priests in the temples to read and write. One day a very bright interesting little girl, twelve years old perhaps, came to our boat to see the strangers. When asked if she could read, she did not answer yes or no, but with surprise exclaimed, ‘Why, I am a girl’—as if we ought to have known better than to ask a girl such a question.” The chief obstacle to education was the notion that education had no value for them. Woman’s place was to serve and please man. So long as she could cook rice, take care of the children and do necessary work without knowing books, why learn? Perhaps Mrs. House did not have a vision of making education an established factor in the customs of Siam; that possibility was too vast and too remote to conceive under the circumstances. But she did have a clear vision that education was indispensable to the amelioration of womankind.