“Until I began here in 1880, the thought of arresting the graduation of a girl was not entertained. If she went through the curriculum without preliminary tests or without any intermediate or final examinations, the diploma followed as a matter of implied contract. Pupils were received to be graduated within a specified time. This sounds incredible, I know, and yet I have the best proof of the fact. When I announced that no pupil would be graduated in my institution without sufficient tests of her scholarship, it was freely predicted that such an innovation would destroy the patronage of the school. I am glad to say that the vaticination was false, but I allude to the facts to throw light upon the status among us.” THE OTHER FEMALE COLLEGES. The schools for women which are of a higher grade than the ordinary high school, but not so high as the college, the Bureau of Education classifies under the head of Superior Instruction. It will be seen from Appendix C, Table III., that the State of Kentucky has nineteen of these female colleges, and that six of the Southern States have an average of fourteen each. They are of all possible degrees of excellence. Such schools as the Hollins Institute and the Norfolk College for Young Ladies in Virginia, and Caldwell College at Danville, Ky., have every mark of being thoroughly good schools. The difficulty with nearly all these schools is, of course, that they are private and money-making enterprises, and do not care to incur large expenses for teachers or for the proper appliances for instruction, nor to make the course of study so rigid as to drive away pupils. It is remarkable to see how soon the character of the course, and especially the character of the text-books, is changed as soon as the majority of the teachers are graduates of Northern colleges. On the other hand, it is the lack of intelligence and care on the part of parents that permits the poorest of these schools to continue to exist. If the worst half of these schools could be starved out of existence, and if their patronage could be transferred to the better half, the quality of the instruction which women receive in the South would be completely changed. It is a duty which parents owe to the public, no less than to their daughters, to discriminate carefully against the thoroughly worthless schools.[28]