the post-road was diverted to the new harbor and shore road, and steadily graded down to suit the advancing "improvements," this old piece over Briar Hill was left as a useless relic, of service only to a few as a wood-road or a cutoff, and was no longer cared for. At oncefor Nature is ever on the watch to reclaim ground lost for a time to man's dominationsun and frost and rain began their replevin. The light soil, disturbed along the single wheeltrack, was swept down by wind and water until a narrow gully has been aggraded, hardly half as wide as the original road, and ten feet deep in places.

It is so narrow because a rank vegetation of trees and shrubs and herbage long ago took possession of the high neglected borders and protected them against washing, except in the central track at the bottom. This tangled borderage, rising steeply on each side and shaded by outreaching tree-tops, makes the Gully Road a beautiful place in summer. Nowhere in early spring does the local naturalist find pleasanter promises of reawakening life. Here, sheltered from the winds, gather juncos, whitethroats, and fox-sparrows-finest of their race, and seeming proudly conscious of their beauty; while songsparrows and Canada sparrows carol in rivalry overhead or join their larger fellows and the goldfinches and towhees in their feast upon the berries and seeds still so abundant in the thickets below. Later the gully becomes a gallery of color and music, and a rich field for the insecthunter.

The banks are indeed perfect little Northern jungles. A score of different trees may be

catalogued. The ancient high borders are defined by rows of gale-torn cedars and cherry trees annually producing bushels of fruit for the benefit of innumerable squirrels, robins, cedarbirds, blue jays, and what-not; while in May masses of dogwood bloom light up the densely mingled foliage that struggles eagerly out toward light and air. Underneath, of course, is an impenetrable tangle of vines and low scrub, silvery green ropes of catbrier, knotted threads of grape and ampelopsis, content to creep where they cannot climb, and fuzzy chains of poison ivy crowding in everywhere among the good plants like-well, find your own moral simile! Blackberries and raspberries strive to outdo even the smilax in prickly vigor. And over all, in this late summertime, spreads a veiling network of wild buckwheat, making the most of a brief life. As for the weeds, well, what are there not in this collection, from the miserable ragweed which kills off the grass to the tall, swaying sow-thistle that invites the slash of a stick to cut down its weak and ugly impudence? Here thrive the feathery yarrow, the exquisite cassia which meekly folds its rows of leaflets if you speak to it harshly, velvety mulleins, primroses, bouquets of goldenrod as big as barrels, and a carpet of pretty little flowering plants, most of which bloom by English roadsides just as they do in this land to which their seeds were brought long ago.

The "human interest" in this so charming bit of secluded old road centers in a shanty half up the slope, where is manifested neglect and degradation of its own kind; but that is "another story."

A PIONEER WOMAN'S COLLEGE In Dr. Abbott's most interesting article "Democracy in Education," published in The Outlook of August 10, it is stated that girls were not admitted to any of the colleges before 1850. But Oberlin in 1833 admitted women on the same terms as men. And as far back as 1830, under the patronage of President Bishop, of Miami University, and two of his professors, McGuffey and Scott, the latter the father-in-law of President Harrison, a school was founded for the higher education of women in Oxford, Ohio, with Miss Bethania Crocker, the daughter of a Massachusetts clergyman, in charge. In three or four years she married the son of President Bishop, and the Misses Smith and Clark, one of them being the sister-in-law of Henry

Ward Beecher, became principals. In 1839 this school was formally chartered by special act of the Ohio Legislature. A regular cottage system for boarding pupils from a distance had been established for several years. Mr. Harry Lewis, the uncle, I think, of Mrs. Philip Moore, had in his own home several of those boarding pupils. In 1849 the Oxford Female Institute was chartered by special act of the Ohio Legislature and the property of the Academy was turned over to this institution. In 1855-6 a handsome building in the east part of the village was dedicated for the Oxford Female College, another institution started under the auspices of the old school Presbyterian Church. In 1867 these colleges for girls were formally united by purchase. From their incipiency, the schools had the avowed purpose of offering to

girls the same opportunities for higher education that the boys were enjoying in Miami University, which latter institution did not become co-educational until 1895. The college girls pursued the same branches as the Miami boys, and, although their curriculum could not compare favorably with that of our best high schools, it represented the college standards of those early days.

Professor Upham, in his "History of Miami University," reports that he has found references to a school for girls in Oxford as early as 1827-8. The intellectual activity of Oxford is traceable to the influence of the New England scholars who settled in southern Ohio in the early days, and especially to the Beechers, who, in their westward progress, unlike the wandering Jew, left a trail of educational institutions behind them. JANE SHERZER.

The Oxford College for Women,
Oxford, Ohio.

THE HIGH SCHOOL TEACHER

As a teacher in one of our city high schools, I should like to take exception to several statements made by Professor Chase in The Outlook of July 27.

The best of our high schools now require their teachers to have college training and previous experience in teaching. As ability (not sex) is the chief requisite, and as women as well as men have "experience of life," it is plain to be seen that the former can fill the requirements of being a high school teacher quite as well as the latter. The degree of "sympathy with young people" felt by teachers depends upon the individual; nevertheless, it might be assumed that, upon the whole, women teachers possess at least as much of this desirable quality as men teachers.

Professor Chase says: "Boards of education. not uncommonly are pleased to fill such positions with seven-hundred-dollar inexperienced girls.... The only person who should be thus employed is the man or, in rarer cases, the woman who makes teaching a life profession." Boards do, indeed, make a mistake in offering only seven hundred dollars for such work, but why such positions should be rarely offered to women I fail to see. On account of the narrow, old-fashioned policy which still prevails in most of our Eastern cities of making women ineligible for the higher positions, the schools are losing some of their best teachers. The fact that women are taking advantage of the larger opportunities in other professions and in business life shows the policy to be a shortsighted one which fails to offer the same opportunities for advancement to both men and women teachers.

It seems as though Professor Chase does not sufficiently appreciate the faithful work done by

women teachers when he says: The admitted prime motive for such a person being in the profession is to acquire temporary self-support and the means of attracting a suitable life companion." Even acquiring "temporary self-support is not an unworthy ambition. When it is found, upon investigation, as was lately the case in one of our largest cities, that one-third of the women teachers, besides supporting themselves, had others dependent upon them, it looks as though many women did not have much of a chance at being only "temporarily self-supporting."

Another condition which makes a great number of women teachers permanently self-supporting is that they enter the profession believing that they have the qualities of a good teacher and thinking of marriage only as a possibility in case they should be fortunate enough to meet a suitable companion. They expect, as highminded women to-day do, the same moral standard in men they would marry that they require of themselves, which makes their chances of "attracting a suitable companion" less likely. It seems as though men, who use teaching merely as a stepping-stone to other professions, were the temporary teachers and women the permanent ones.

Gradually, as women's work comes to be better understood and more highly appreciated, boards of education will offer equal pay for equal work, and equal opportunities for all teachers; and our great universities will be glad to secure the services of many valuable teachers who are now overlooked. A. C. B.

PERSONAL CHRISTIAN WORK

Pardon me for protesting against the spirit of the article in The Outlook for August 10, 1912, entitled "Letters to Unknown Friends."

It is of course true that Christ never forced any one to talk with him regarding spiritual matters. You are, however, at variance with the record when you say in your article that "the woman at the well opened the conversa tion with him." By referring to John iv. 1, etc., it is quite clear that the conversation, much to the astonishment of the woman, was opened by Christ asking her for a drink of water, and then adroitly leading the conversation to spiritual things. This is Christ's method, and should be the method of every true follower. Force no man, but attempt to lead all. Here is the standard; attempt to carry it out as far as possible, and if one addressed on this great subject, after a tactful approach, takes exception and objects to the conversation, we agree then that there is absolutely nothing in the whole Bible to warrant any individual, church, or government forcing upon him the consideration of the subject, but rather the contrary is true, "Let him alone." L. C. V. Germantown, Tennessee.

Mrs. Janet Ross is one of the few living persons who ever had the temerity to rebuke Thomas Carlyle. When Mrs. Ross was a child of six, she was present at a somewhat animated conversation between her mother and Mr. Carlyle. She became indignant at the blustering tone of the philosopher, and burst out with the exclamation, " My papa says men should be civil to women!" Carlyle paused and then remarked graciously to the little girl's mother, "Lucykin, that child of yours has an eye for an inference!"

Americans who went abroad this summer to escape the heat found that they had gone too far, for complaints are general that Europe has had cold and disagreeable weather this season. Tourists in England especially have suffered from cold, and it is even reported that there was a heavy fall of snow in central England on the August Bank Holiday.

It is pleasant to learn that some of the garment workers of New York City are bettering their industrial conditions. Last week the cap-makers of that city secured a Saturday half-holiday the year around, and the furnishing of sewing-machines in the shops by the employers instead of having to provide them for themselves. A strike was thus happily averted.

Ex-President Diaz, of Mexico, is now living in Switzerland. He is reported to be in good health, clear of mind, and as erect as a West Point cadet, despite his eighty-four years." He maintains that he could have held his position in Mexico by force, but that he desired only Mexico's good, and felt that it was wiser to withdraw. That sounds patriotic, but hardly explains why Diaz lost his grip on things.

A new hemp-breaking machine promises to bring renewed prosperity to certain districts of the South. In slavery days hemp-raising was a great industry; Kentucky, for instance, devoted 30,000 or 40,000 acres to the crop, while latterly scarcely a tenth of this acreage has been employed in this way, for breaking hemp by manual labor is extremely hard work, and the laborers grew scarce. Now the machine is said to have produced excellent results, and a large extension of hemp-raising is looked for.

A statistician has calculated that during the year 1911 there were twenty-two billion telephone calls throughout the world. Fourteen and a half billion of these were in the United States.

The National Secretary of the Associated Clubs of Domestic Science, Mrs. Christine Frederick, is applying efficiency methods to her own housework. She tells in the "Ladies' Home Journal "how she used to wash eighty dishes after dinner, taking threequarters of an hour to do the work poorly by the old methods. Now she washes the same number of articles in half an hour, and better, by the scientific method. The elimination of "lost motions "is the chief. factor in bringing about this most desirable result.

Three or four decades ago the banana was almost unknown in the United States, while to-day we are importing nearly 30,000,000 bunches of the fruit annually. Of these New Orleans gets nearly onehalf, making it the greatest banana port of the

world; Boston, Mobile, and New York come next, in the order named. England also has lately become a great consumer of bananas.

Three survivors of the Civil War are more than one hundred years old. One of these, at the age of 103, recently walked from his home in Jersey City to the pension agency in Brooklyn to see why his quarterly pension check had not arrived:-" Congressional Record" please copy!

Outside the walls of a temple in Puri, India, says the "Christian Herald," lie remnants of this year's car of Juggernaut. A new car is built every year. "The British Government," says the "Herald,”

now prevents the sacrifice of life under the car." We note that Sir W. W. Hunter, the authority on India, in speaking of the reports of death under the wheels of this car, says that "nothing could be more opposed to the spirit of Vishnu-worship than selfimmolation." Suicide in this way, it appears, is about on a par with self-destruction under the wheels of railway cars in America.

The youngest Mayor in the United States, says the" American Magazine." is Joseph F. Sullivan, of Imboden, Arkansas. He was elected just before his twenty-first birthday, and assumed office just after that anniversary. He is a "self-made man" in more than the usual sense, for he won his education and supported his widowed mother notwithstanding the fact that he is a cripple and goes about Imboden in a wagon drawn by two goats.

That the old order changes even in a church that is supposed by some to be immutable is seen in the announcement that the Sisters of St. Joseph, a Roman Catholic order, are to erect on their property in Brooklyn, New York, an up-to-date building in which Catholic girls will be trained for a business life.

A fellow-craftsman of Benjamin Franklin, Isaiah Thomas, whose career in many respects closely paralleled that of his more famous compatriot, has been honored by a biography issued by the Club of Odd Volumes of Boston. Thomas began to set type at the age of seven; when eight he set the types for an edition of the New England Primer;" when thirteen he engraved the cuts and printed the sheets for "The New Book of Knowledge;" later he founded the newspaper "The Massachusetts Spy," and still later the American Antiquarian Society.

Guadalajara, Mexico, which occupies the second place among the cities of that republic, has been devastated by earthquakes during the past few months. A newspaper report makes the curious statement, in referring to these disturbances, that parrots are the best prophets of seismic troubles, and that they have frequently given warning to Guadalajara's residents, by their peculiar cries, when an earthquake was impending.

Mrs. Malaprop, who, it will be remembered, once said that a pantry was a place for keeping pants and a vestry was a place where vests were made, now shows herself to be up with the times, according to an exchange, by supplying a questioner with the information that "an apiary is where they keep apes and an aviary is where they keep air-ships."

to assume that responsibility; and it also appears to indicate, from the way in which the vote was divided, that the working classes in the cities are opposed to woman suffrage. The issues in Ohio's revision of her Constitution, and the large principles which apply to State Constitutional revision generally, were discussed in an editorial to be found in The Outlook of August 24. Taking the many changes adopted as a whole, it may be declared emphatically that they make for social justice, for greater flexibility in the political machinery, for larger democracy, and for direct control by the people of the State. In brief, with few exceptions, Ohio has written into its fundamental law many of those things for which the Progressive party is fighting the country over. This was fully recognized at the Ohio State Progressive Convention, which was largely a meeting of rejoicing and congratulation.

A full Progressive State ticket

was put in the field, headed by Arthur L. Garfield as candidate for the Governorship. The other State Progressive Conventions named above were businesslike, thorough, and hopeful in tone, and through them and those to follow the Progressive party will go into the field admirably organized, with leaders of ability, and with clear-cut programmes and pledges of action. In California the primaries showed a sweeping Progressive victory, not less welcome because it was anticipated; it was indeed so great that the Taft leaders will have to put their Presidential electors in the field by petitions, each of which must be signed by eleven thousand voters who did not participate in the primaries. In Iowa John L. Stevens has been selected as the Progressive candidate for Governor; in North Carolina, Dr. Cyrus Thompson. Turning to personal political utterances, we quote from Senator Cummins's statement referred to above:

The renomination of President Taft was opposed by an overwhelming majority of the Republicans throughout the country simply because in his Administration he had not done nor said the things which the great body of the people believed he should have done and said. ... The reason the Republicans were so largely against the renomination of Mr. Taft was their profound conviction that he is not a Progressive, and does not believe in a proper sense that the people should rule the country. . . . Theodore Roosevelt was the manifest choice of the great number of Republicans who expressed a choice for President. He is appealing to the moral and progressive forces of the people, and I expect to vote for him; but it must be understood that I will do so protesting against the

organization of a new party, and dissenting with some of the doctrines of his platform. My vote for him will indicate that I believe he desires to promote the common welfare, but will not indicate that I look upon the new party as a wise or enduring movement in public affairs. Senator Bourne is equally explicit. He says:

The Republicans of Oregon, as well as of every other Presidential primary State except Wisconsin, selected Mr. Roosevelt as their choice for President this year. These Presidential primary returns clearly indicate that Mr. Roosevelt is the choice of the great majority of the Republican party, and he certainly was of Oregon; hence I, being the originator of the Presidential preference law, shall support Mr. Roosevelt for the Presidency at the November election.

Nothing has so effectively brought out the fact that the nominations of the Chicago Republican Convention were based on the suppression of the wishes of the vast majority of Republicans as these reasons given by Senator Cummins and Senator Bourne for their decision to support the Progressive National candidates.

Convention: Unbossed

and Unafraid

ciated with two Presidents, Cleveland and Roosevelt, who as Ambassador to Turkey has had an exceptional record in diplomatic service, who was the first Secretary of Commerce and Labor, who has served as arbitrator in labor disputes, and is a member of the highest tribunal in the world, the International Court at the Hague. was chosen at the State Convention held at Syracuse last week to be the Progressive candidate for Governor of New York. This nomination alone makes this State Convention of National interest. There were other features, however, which also mark it as extraordinary. In the first place, the circumstances surrounding the nomination were highly dramatic and moving. Like the National Convention of the Progressives at Chicago, this Convention at Syracuse had great capacity for enthusiasm. The great body of delegates, among whom there was a considerable number of women, sang hymns and songs after the manner of the delegates who assembled in August at Chicago. The Convention hall was reddened with the color of the bandannas that were waved whenever, as often happened, the assemblage rose to cheer. At the same time the Convention had an extraordinary capacity for silent attention. The chief contest was over the nomination for the