An important feature in secondary education in the South is the establishment of the Bryn Mawr Preparatory School in Baltimore. In 1884 five ladies formed themselves into a committee and appointed a secretary and six teachers (science, classics, mathematics, history, French, and German), all college graduates, and a drawing teacher. The school opened with forty pupils, and in the third year it met all its expenses. A very handsome building, containing a thoroughly well-equipped gymnasium, is now (1889) being erected by Miss Mary Garrett (one of the directors) for the future accommodation of the school. For this building the directors expect to pay a fair rent—if not on the actual cost, yet on the price of a building that would have met the needs of the school. They are anxious to prove that a school of this grade can be made to pay.[29] They intend, out of the earnings of the school, to pay the college expenses for four years of the two best students of each year’s graduating class. The distinguishing mark of the school is that it requires each child who enters to take the subjects required for entrance to college (the Bryn Mawr College entrance examinations are given in the sixth and seventh years) and at the same time a continuous course in drawing, science, and history, in order that a satisfactory course of study may be offered to girls who do not intend to go to college. The number of pupils is limited to 150. NORMAL SCHOOLS AND INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION. In the great advance which has been made in the South since the war in the establishment of systems of public schools, the managers of the Peabody Fund have played a very important part. It has been said, and without exaggeration, that no two millions of dollars ever did so much good to the cause of education. Normal schools, in particular, have been the object of their special care. In accordance with the express wishes of the founder, the fund has offered aid proportionate to what a State might do in order to secure the establishment of such schools; and the initiative steps in every State included in its administration have been taken under the suggestion and stimulus of its managers. There are now thirty-two normal schools in the South; Alabama has seven, Georgia and North Carolina have none. The Normal College at Nashville is not only a normal school for Tennessee, but for the whole South as well; the trustees of the Peabody Fund distribute 114 free scholarships annually among ten Southern States. They have also established recently the Winthrop Training School for white girls in South Carolina, and that State has for the first time made an appropriation especially for the higher education of girls.[30]