wonder from Barnum’s Museum.  “Why, don’t you see those boys?” said one.  “Oh,” I replied, “is that all?  I have seen boys all my life.”  When visiting family friends in the city, we were in the way of making the acquaintance of their sons, and as all social relations were strictly forbidden, there was a new interest in seeing them.  As they were not allowed to call upon us or write notes, unless they were brothers or cousins, we had, in time, a large number of kinsmen.

There was an intense interest to me now in writing notes, receiving calls, and joining the young men in the streets for a walk, such as I had never known when in constant association with them at school and in our daily amusements.  Shut up with girls, most of them older than myself, I heard many subjects discussed of which I had never thought before, and in a manner it were better I had never heard.  The healthful restraint always existing between boys and girls in conversation is apt to be relaxed with either sex alone.  In all my intimate association with boys up to that period, I cannot recall one word or act for criticism, but I cannot say the same of the girls during the three years I passed at the seminary in Troy.  My own experience proves to me that it is a grave mistake to send boys and girls to separate institutions of learning, especially at the most impressible age.  The stimulus of sex promotes alike a healthy condition of the intellectual and the moral faculties and gives to both a development they never can acquire alone.

Mrs. Willard, having spent several months in Europe, did not return until I had been at the seminary some time.  I well remember her arrival, and the joy with which she was greeted by the teachers and pupils who had known her before.  She was a splendid-looking woman, then in her prime, and fully realized my idea of a queen.  I doubt whether any royal personage in the Old World could have received her worshipers with more grace and dignity than did this far-famed daughter of the Republic.  She was one of the remarkable women of that period, and did a great educational work for her sex.  She gave free scholarships to a large number of promising girls, fitting them for teachers, with a proviso that, when the opportunity arose, they should, in turn, educate others.

I shall never forget one incident that occasioned me much unhappiness.  I had written a very amusing composition, describing my room.  A friend came in to see me just as I had finished it, and, as she asked me to read it to her, I did so.  She enjoyed it very much and proposed an exchange.  She said the rooms were all so nearly alike that, with a little alteration, she could use it.  Being very susceptible to flattery, her praise of my production won a ready assent; but when I read her platitudes I was sorry I had changed, and still more so in the denouement.