If I secured a building and proceeded to open a school, it would be only one more private school like the score they already had; that the School Board, as officers of the law, with accepted rights and duties, must so far connect themselves with the effort as to provide quarters, the necessary furnishings, and to give due and respectable notice of the same among the people. In fact, it must stand as by their order, leaving the work and results to me. I was not there for necessity. Fortunately I needed nothing of them--neither as an adventuress. I had no personal ambitions to serve, but as an observer of unwelcome conditions, and, as I thought, harmful as well, to try, so far as possible, the power of a good, wise, beneficent, and established state law, as against the force of ignorance, blind prejudice, and the tyranny of an obsolete, outlived public opinion. I desired to see them both fairly placed upon their merits before an intelligent community, leaving the results to the winner. If the law, after trial, were not acceptable, or of use to the people serving their best interest, abolish or change it--if it were, enforce and sustain it. My reply was much longer than the remarks that had called for it, but the pledge of good listening was faithfully kept. When he spoke again, it was to ask if I desired my proposition to be laid before the School Board? I surely did. He would speak with the gentlemen this evening, and call a meeting for to-morrow. Our interview had consumed two hours, and we parted better friends than we commenced. The following afternoon, to my surprise, I was most courteously invited to sit with the School Board in its deliberations, and I made the acquaintance of two more, plain, honest-minded gentlemen. The subject was fairly discussed, but with great misgivings, a kind of tender sympathy running through it all. At length Mr. Suydam arose, and, addressing his colleagues, said, “Gentlemen, we feel alike, I am sure, regarding the hazardous nature of this experiment and its probable results, but situated as we are, officers of a law which we are sworn to obey and enforce, can we legally decline to accede to this proposition, which is in every respect within the law. From your expressed opinions of last evening I believe we agree on this point, and I put the vote.” It was a unanimous yea, with the decision that the old closed schoolhouse be refitted, and a school commenced. The school speedily outgrew its quarters, and Clara sent word to Oxford that she must have an assistant. Her brother Stephen secured the services of Miss Frances Childs, who subsequently became Mrs. Bernard Barton Vassall. Frances had just finished her first term as teacher of a school in Oxford, and she proved a very capable assistant. Letters from, and personal interviews with, her have brought vividly before me the conditions of Clara’s work in Bordentown. [Illustration: