the scattering, haphazard kind of education then commonly bestowed upon girls helped to bring about such a condition of things. Efficient work, in literature as in other professions, is dependent, in a degree, upon preparation; not indeed upon the actual amount of knowledge possessed, but upon the training of the mind to sure action, and the vitality of the spark of intellectual life communicated in early days. To the desultory and aimless education of girls at this period, and their continual servitude to the sampler, all will testify. “My education,” says Mrs. Gilman, “was exceedingly irregular, a perpetual passing from school to school.... I drew a very little and worked ‘The Babes in the Wood’ on white satin, with floss silk.” By and by, however, she “was initiated into Latin,” studied Watts’s Logic by herself, and joined a private class in French. Lydia Huntley (Mrs. Sigourney), fared somewhat better; pursuing mathematics, though she admits that too little time was accorded to the subject; and being instructed in “the belles-lettres studies” by competent teachers. Her day-school education ceased at thirteen; she afterward worked alone over history and mental philosophy, had tutors in Latin and French, and even dipped into Hebrew, under clerical guidance. This has a deceptively advanced sound; we are to learn presently that she was sent away to boarding-school, where she applied herself to—“embroidery of historical scenes, filigree, and other finger-works.” (May we not find a connection between this kind of training, and the production of dramatic characters as lifelike as those figures in floss silk? Was it not a natural result, that corresponding “embroidery of historical scenes” performed by the feminine pen?) Lydia Maria Francis (Mrs. Child) “apart from her brother’s companionship, had, as usual, a very unequal share of educational opportunities; attending only the public schools”—the public schools of the century in its teens—“with one year at a private seminary.” She writes to the Rev. Convers Francis in 1838, “If I possessed your knowledge, it seems to me as if I could move the whole world. I am often amused and surprised to think how many things I have attempted to do with my scanty stock of learning.” Catherine Sedgwick, “reared in an atmosphere of high intelligence,” still confesses, “I have all my life felt the want of more systematic training.”