culture and position can assume without loss of caste and
respectability.

It is the aim of this volume to elevate both the honor and the
remuneration of all the employments that sustain the many difficult
and sacred duties of the family state, and thus to render each
department of woman's true profession as much desired and respected
as are the most honored professions of men.

When the other sex are to be instructed in law, medicine, or divinity,
they are favored with numerous institutions richly endowed, with
teachers of the highest talents and acquirements, with extensive
libraries, and abundant and costly apparatus. With such advantages
they devote nearly ten of the best years of life to preparing themselves
for their profession; and to secure the public from unqualified members
of these professions, none can enter them until examined by a competent
body, who certify to their due preparation for their duties.

Woman's profession embraces the care and nursing of the body in the
critical periods of infancy and sickness, the training of the human
mind in the most impressible period of childhood, the instruction and
control of servants, and most of the government and economies of the
family state. These duties of woman are as sacred and important as any
ordained to man; and yet no such advantages for preparation have been
accorded to her, nor is there any qualified body to certify the public
that a woman is duly prepared to give proper instruction in her
profession.

This unfortunate want, and also the questions frequently asked
concerning the domestic qualifications of both the authors of this