eminent Oriental would have been pleased to hear that this public
administration of the alphabet to females, on any terms, is an
institution but little more than a half-century old in the city of
Boston. It is well established by the early deeds and documents that a
large proportion of Puritan women could not write their own names; and
in Boston especially, for a hundred and fifty years, the public schools
included boys only. In the year 1789, however, the notable discovery was
made, that the average attendance of pupils from April to October was
only one half of that reported for the remainder of the year. This was
an obvious waste of money and accommodations, and it was therefore
proposed that female pupils should be annually introduced during this
intermediate period. Accordingly, school-girls, like other flowers,
blossomed in summer only; and this state of things lasted, with
but slight modification, for some forty years, according to the
School-Superintendent's Third Report. It was not till 1828 that all
distinctions were abolished in the Boston Common Schools; in the High
Schools lingering far later, sole vestige of the "good old times,"
before a mistaken economy overthrew the wholesome doctrine of M. Sylvain
Maréchal, and let loose the alphabet among women.

It is true that Eve ruined us all, according to theology, without
knowing her letters. Still, there is something to be said in defence
of that venerable ancestress. The Veronese lady, Isotta Nogarola, five
hundred and thirty-six of whose learned letters were preserved by De
Thou, composed a dialogue on the question, Whether Adam or Eve had
committed the greater sin? But Ludovico Domenichi, in his "Dialogue on
the Nobleness of Women," maintains that Eve did not sin at all, because
she was not even created when Adam was told not to eat the apple. It is
"in Adam all died," he shrewdly says; nobody died in Eve;--which
looks plausible. Be that as it may, Eve's daughters are in danger of