thoroughly educated women who are now prepared to occupy chairs of instruction, once filled only by the most honored alumni of our best universities. We are coming to welcome woman's taste, and tact, and power, into every department of our educational work, and we have much to hope from the new element thus introduced. Without attempting to name, even, the many eminent women whose personal attainments and services have contributed largely towards this result, we shall, in this chapter, briefly sketch the career of only two of them, who, by common consent,, must be held to rank as pioneers in this most excellent work.. MRS. EMMA WILLARD. First among the women, still living, who have attained high rank as professional educators, must stand the name at the head of this sketch. And this position Mrs. Willard deserves, whether we regard her as a pioneer, creating for herself, and her sex, a new place and rank among educators, or simply as an earnest and skilful worker, rendering eminent service in this field. That she is fairly entitled to this eminence among the gifted women of our day, a very brief sketch of her career will fully show. The story itself is a true epic, needing only the simplest recital, its main facts. being more exciting than any fiction we should dare to invent. HER BIRTH AND CHILDHOOD. February 23, 1787, is the date of her birth; Samuel and Lydia (Hinsdale) Hart, her parents; and a quiet country farmhouse in the parish of Worthington, in Berlin, Connecticut, her birthplace. Born of the best New England stock, she inherited the noblest qualities of her parentage. Her father, a man of unusual strength of intellect and will, was self reliant, and well-read, in, at least, the English literature of the times; and her mother a quiet and practical woman, gifted with native tact and shrewdness, gentle, firm, and efficient. The home they made for their children was just the home in which gifted children would like to be reared. And this home, more than anything else determined the character and success of Emma, their sixteenth child, whose record we are now to trace. Being one of seventeen of her father's children, and one of the ten whom her own mother had borne him, she early found in this large circle one important means of her training. Let us enter that rural home. We will take an early evening hour, about mid-winter, and for the date it may be anywhere between her birthday and the year 1804, the date of her first attempt to teach. The scene we shall witness will best prepare us for what we are to learn of the great work of her future life. The children have already spent their six hours in their school. They have severally done up the chores which, in those primitive times, our children were supposed able to do. They had just finished with thanksgiving their relishful supper. The youngest of them have already dropped away into the sweet sleep of their night's rest. The huge wood fire glows warmly upon that happy home-circle gathering around it. The older children, all aglow with a joyful interest, finish the little story of their day's fun, and frolic, and work, and successively test their skill in reading aloud a few well-chosen passages from the selectest authors of the day. Then father and mother, no less joyful, add the benediction of their few words of approval, and their timely hints for correction. And now, for another half hour, or hour, if this be deemed needed, the father and motherblessed mentors they !-read, in their turn, aloud, and with the skill which long practice has given them, their lessons for |