to train young men for church ministries, a large portion of them largely endowed by women; while not even one has yet been established to train woman for her no less sacred ministry.
[39:A] These statistics are taken from the Report of the National Bureau of Education for 1870.
When I took charge of the Hartford Female Seminary, this fall, the trustees and former principal had established a course of study, and pupils were preparing to graduate as in past time; while many reasons were urged for making no great changes.
The list of branches to be taught, as exhibited in the circular, is no larger than is common in many women high-schools and colleges, each one requiring a text-book, and reads thus: Spelling, reading, writing, grammar, arithmetic, higher arithmetic, algebra, history of the United States, physiology, physical geography, geometry, natural philosophy, chemistry, astronomy, mental philosophy, Butler's Analogy of Natural and Revealed Religion, æsthetics, English literature, history of Greece, history of Rome, philology, ancient and modern
history, composition, natural history, history of England, history of France, botany, geology, rhetoric, trigonometry, moral philosophy, history of literature, history of arts and sciences, Latin, Greek, French, German, Italian, Spanish, drawing, painting in water-colors, painting in oil, vocal music, instrumental music, and gymnastics; forty-four in the whole.
For all these I am responsible to select teachers, to examine text-books, to decide on the modes of teaching, and to see that all departments are administered properly.
I can not carry out all these without at least seven English teachers, and four or five for the languages and accomplishments. And in arranging classes in so many branches, these teachers, on an average, must teach four or five hours a day, and have charge of six or seven classes in nearly as many different studies.
Though tuition charges have ever been larger than young men pay in colleges, in my former experience forty years ago, I could not retain the best teachers and furnish apparatus and
advantages needed, only by using the whole income, except what I paid for my own board and my very economical personal expenses. And now, the income from one hundred pupils would not save me from embarrassing debt had I not other resources.
If I worked my teachers at the risk of their health, and employed those of humbler qualifications, I might, perhaps, make a small profit, but not otherwise. And as fast as teachers are trained, so as to be most valuable, (as in my earlier experience,) they will leave for posts offering higher pay and less labor. Neither Mrs. Stowe, nor myself, nor any of the most highly qualified ladies of our country, could take charge of such an institution without a sacrifice of an income counting by thousands. Will not a time come when ladies, the most highly qualified to educate their own sex, shall receive such advantages and compensation for these duties as now are exclusively given to men? My extensive acquaintance with ladies of this class all over the land enables me to