One of the most important questions now occupying the minds of the world's deepest and best thinkers, is the intellectual, physical, moral, and political position of woman. Men are beginning to realize a fact that has been evident enough for ages: that the current of civilization can never rise higher than the springs of motherhood. Given the ignorant, debased mothers of the Turkish harem, and the inevitable result is a nation destitute of truth, honor or political position. All the power of the Roman legions, all the wealth of the imperial empire, could not save the throne of the Cæsars when the Roman matron was shorn of her honor, and womanhood became only the slave or the toy of its citizens. Men have been slow to grasp the fact that women are a "true constituent of the bone and sinew of society," and as such should be trained to bear the part of "bone and sinew." It has been finely said, "that as times have altered and conditions varied, the respect has varied in which woman has been held. At one time condemned to the field and counted with the cattle, at another time condemned to the drawing-room and inventoried with marbles, oils and water-colors; but only in instances comparatively rare, acknowledged and recognized in the fullness of her moral and intellectual possibilities, and in the beauteous completeness of her personal dignity, prowess and obligation." [Illustration: The Library Reading Room] [Illustration: Art Department Painting] Various and widely divergent as opinions are in regard to woman's place in the political sphere, there is fast coming to be unanimity of thought in regard to her intellectual development. Even in Turkey, fathers are beginning to see that their daughters are better, not worse, for being able to read and, write, and civilization is about ready to concede that the intellectual, physical and moral possibilities of woman are to be the only limits to her attainment. Vast strides in the direction of the higher and broader education of women have been made in the quarter of a century since John Vassar founded on the banks of the Hudson the noble college for women that bears his name; and others have been found who have lent willing hands to making broad the highway that leads to an ideal womanhood. Wellesley and Smith, as well as Vassar find their limits all too small for the throngs of eager girlhood that are pressing toward them. The Boston University, honored in being first to open professional courses to women, Michigan University, the New England Conservatory, the North Western University of Illinois, the Wesleyan Universities, both of Connecticut and Ohio, with others of the colleges of the country, have opened their doors and welcomed women to an equal share with men, in their advantages. And in the shadow of Oxford, on the Thames, and of Harvard, on the Charles, womanly minds are growing, womanly lives are shaping, and womanly patience is waiting until every