The daughters of the pioneers of Georgia's early settlements received a home education; at least, in the duties of domestic life. In the discharge of these duties, they gained robust constitutions and vigorous health; they increased the butcher's bill at the expense of the doctor's; and such women were the mothers of the men who have made a history for their country, for themselves and their mothers. I may be prolix and prosaic, but I love to remember the mothers of fifty years ago--she who gave birth to Lucius Q.C. and Mirabeau B. Lamar, to William C. Dawson, Bishop George Pierce, Alexander Stuart, Joseph Lumpkin, and glorious Bob Toombs. I knew them all, and, with affectionate delight, remember their virtues, and recall the social hours we have enjoyed together, when they were matrons, and I the companion of their sons. And now, when all are gone, and time is crowding me to the grave, the nobleness of their characters, the simplicity of their bearing in the discharge of their household duties, and the ingenuousness of their manners in social intercourse, is a cherished, venerated memory. None of these women were ever in a boarding-school, never received a lesson in the art of entering a drawing-room or captivating a beau. They were sensible, modest, and moral women, and their virtues live after them in the exalted character of their illustrious sons. Their literary education in early life was, of necessity, neglected, because of the want of opportunities; but in the virtues and duties of life, they were thoroughly educated; and none of these, or any of their like, was ever Mrs. President or Secretary of any pretentious or useless society or association. The little education or literature they acquired was in the old log school-house, where boys and girls commingled as pupils under the teaching of some honest pedagogue, who aspired to teach only reading, writing, and arithmetic, in a simple way. It must not be supposed, from the foregoing remarks, that I object to female education; on the contrary, I would have every woman an educated woman. But I would have this education an useful and proper education; one not wholly ornamental and of no practical use, but one obtained at home, and under the parental care and influence--such an one as made Mrs. Ripley, of Concord, Massachusetts, the wonder and admiration of every sensible man. She who studied La Place's _Mécanique Céleste_ when she was making biscuit for her breakfast, and who solved a problem in the higher mathematics when darning her stockings; an education where the useful may be taught and learned to grace the ornamental--where the harp and piano shall share with the needle and the cooking-stove, and the pirouettes of the dancing-master shall be only a step from the laundry and the kitchen.