EFFECTS OF MENTAL GROWTH. "Clear away the parasitic forms That seem to keep her up, but drag her down; Leave her space to bourgeon out of all Within her." EFFECTS OF MENTAL GROWTH A few years since, when Mr. Higginson's essay "Ought Women to learn the Alphabet?" first appeared in the _Atlantic Monthly_, and I was reading some of its keen sarcasms to a gentleman just returned from a tour of Eastern travel, he related a bit of his recent experience in the old city of Sychar, in Samaria. There was pointed out to him as an object of great interest and attention, a remarkable girl. She was the theme of animated discussion throughout all the neighborhood of Ebal and Gerizim--the observed of all observers, when she appeared on the street, or went with the maidens of Sychar to draw water from Jacob's well, still the glory of their city. This little maiden's distinction was that she was the first girl in that old city, who, during a period of nine hundred years, had transcended the allotted sphere of woman in so bold a step as that of going to school and learning to read. There had been no special purpose in the act. She had been attracted by the mysterious sounds from the room where boys were taking their first lessons in Talmudic law and lore, and had gratified her curiosity by learning what they meant. "It whistled itself," averred the little school-boy, apologetically, under fear of the rod; so she, another _it_, learned itself. It was not until the steps of other little maidens were also tending towards school, that the gravity of her transgression, and the danger of the innovation, were at all comprehended. Then there was indeed an excitement among the orthodox Samaritans. In the opinion of the staunch appellants to the Law and the Prophets, she had transcended the limitations of her sex, and the marital claim, "My wife is my shoe" was ominously threatened. Sychar had not been so roused for ages. The scribes and prophets waited in expectancy to see fire from heaven descend upon a city where such things had been suffered, or to see the young transgressor transformed, by the judgments of heaven, out of the proper semblance of womanhood. But when she appeared in the streets, with her sister maidens, performed her appointed tasks in rank and file with them, talked and chatted as heretofore--though perhaps gossiped less--and bore her pitcher as deftly on her head as ever, the matter began to die away, and she was only pointed out as the one who had _first_ sinned. True, the High Priest shook his head and prophesied "The end is not yet." But the fire had caught, and, according to the laws of fire, physical or Promethean, it spread, until between the mountains of blessing and cursing, a dozen Samaritan girls had learned the alphabet.