It is not without a purpose that I have given this somewhat glowing
account of a girls' school in New York so soon after my little
picture of New York women, as they behave themselves in the streets
and street cars. It will, of course, be said that those women of
whom I have spoken, by no means in terms of admiration, are the
very girls whose education has been so excellent. This of course
is so; but I beg to remark that I have by no means said that an
excellent school education will produce all female excellencies.
The fact, I take it, is this: that seeing how high in the scale
these girls have been raised, one is anxious that they should be
raised higher. One is surprised at their pert vulgarity and
hideous airs, not because they are so low in our general
estimation, but because they are so high. Women of the same class
in London are humble enough, and therefore rarely offend us who are
squeamish. They show by their gestures that they hardly think
themselves good enough to sit by us; they apologize for their
presence; they conceive it to be their duty to be lowly in their
gesture. The question is which is best, the crouching and
crawling, or the impudent, unattractive self-composure. Not, my
reader, which action on her part may the better conduce to my
comfort or to yours. That is by no means the question. Which is
the better for the woman herself? That, I take it, is the point to
be decided. That there is something better than either, we shall
all agree--but to my thinking the crouching and crawling is the
lowest type of all.

At that school I saw some five or six hundred girls collected in
one room, and heard them sing. The singing was very pretty, and it
was all very nice; but I own that I was rather startled, and to
tell the truth somewhat abashed, when I was invited to "say a few