The first systematic effort for the physical development of women was made in 1861 in Boston. A “Normal Institute for Physical Culture,” was established by Dr. Dio Lewis, aided by the president and some of the professors of Harvard College. At the outset the young women pupils were found lamentably deficient in respect of physical development. Later, Dr. Lewis stated that “in every one of the thirteen classes which were graduated, the best gymnast was a woman. In each class there were from two to six women superior to any of the men.” Dr. Walter Channing, one of the professors, often spoke with enthusiasm of the physical superiority of the women to the men. From the graduates of these classes instruction in light gymnastics was widely introduced into schools throughout the country. Now the well-appointed gymnasium is a prominent feature of the leading colleges to which women are admitted, and the erection and endowment of this department is a favorite form of benefaction from the alumnæ. Prof. Huxley says, “No system of education is worthy the name, unless it creates a great educational ladder, with one end in the gutter and the other in the university.” Such was the intuitive feeling of our ancestors, even in the Colonial days, with regard to boys. When, however, in the course of centuries, conviction came to a few that what had been for one sex only was, in fairness, due to the other as well, the atmosphere of the older States did not prove bracing enough to sustain so utopian a theory, and the ambitious daughters of New England were obliged to follow those who, transplanted to the virgin soil of Ohio, had opened Oberlin College, offering such opportunities as it could furnish without distinction of race, and with but limited discrimination against sex. Something more remarkable than the hungry young mind seeking mental food at disadvantage, was witnessed in 1853, when the full mind and earnest spirit of the leading New England educator, Hon. Horace Mann, eager to inaugurate the best methods of the higher education in a co-educational college, found his only chance by leaving his native New England, to build an institution from its very foundation, in a section remote from literary association. The pathos is deepened that his life was sacrificed in the contest with obstacles. Following this magnetic leader; again a few New England girls turned westward, and gained, at Antioch College, Ohio, what the East still denied them. Twelve years later, and two hundred and forty years after Harvard was established for boys, private beneficence endowed “Boston University” on a co-educational basis, and in 1869 a college in Massachusetts was opened to girls for the first time.