An instructive fact touching woman's inventive achievements is that her fullest success is coincident with her enlarged opportunities for education, and began with the breaking down of the prejudices which so long existed against her having anything to do with the development of the mechanical or industrial arts. When one recollects that the public schools of Boston, established in 1642, were not open to girls until a century and a half later, and then only for the most elementary branches and for but one-half the year; and that girls did not have the benefit of a high school education in the center of New England culture until 1852; and when one furthermore recalls the attitude of the general public toward women and girls extending their activities beyond the nursery and the kitchen, it is easy to understand that there was not much encouragement for them to exercise their inventive talent, even if they had felt an inclination to do so. The experience of Miss Margaret Knight, of Boston, who in 1871 was awarded a valuable patent for making a paper-bag machine is a case in point and well illustrates some of the difficulties that women inventors had to contend with only a few decades ago. "As a child," she writes to a friend, "I never cared for the things that girls usually do; dolls never had any charms for me. I couldn't see the sense of coddling bits of porcelain with senseless faces; the only things I wanted were a jackknife, a gimlet and pieces of wood. My friends were horrified. I was called a tomboy, but that made very little impression on me. I sighed sometimes because I was not like other girls, but wisely concluded that I couldn't help it, and sought further consolation from my tools. I was always making things for my brothers. Did they want anything in the line of playthings, they always said, 'Mattie will make them for us.' I was famous for my kites, and my sleds were the envy and admiration of all the boys in town. I'm not surprised at what I've done; I'm only sorry I couldn't have had as good a chance as a boy, and have been put to my trade regularly." Even after she had demonstrated her skill as an inventor, Miss Knight had to encounter the skepticism of the workmen to whom she entrusted the manufacture of her machines. They questioned her ability to superintend her own work, and it was only her persistency and remarkable competency that ultimately converted their incredulity into respect and admiration. Since women have come into the possession of greater freedom than they formerly enjoyed, and have been afforded better opportunities of developing their inventive faculties, many of them have taken to invention as an occupation, and with marked success. They find it the easiest and most congenial way of earning a livelihood, and not a few of them have been able thereby to accumulate comfortable fortunes, besides developing industries that have given employment to thousands of both sexes.