and, after as good a general statement as I know how to make, select a branch of the subject, and lead others to give their thoughts upon it.  When they have not been successful in verbal utterance of their thoughts, I have asked them to attempt it in writing.  At the next meeting, I would read these “skarts of pen and ink” aloud, and canvass their adequacy, without mentioning the names of the writers.  I found this less necessary, as I proceeded, and my companions attained greater command both of thought and language; but for a time it was useful, and may be now.  Great advantage in point of discipline may be derived from even this limited use of the pen.

’I do not wish, at present, to pledge myself to any course of subjects.  Generally, I may say, they will be such as literature and the arts present in endless profusion.  Should a class be brought together, I should wish, first, to ascertain our common ground, and, in the course of a few meetings, should see whether it be practicable to follow out the design in my mind, which, as yet, would look too grand on paper.

    ’Let us see whether there will be any organ, before noting
    down the music to which it may give breath.’

Accordingly, a class of ladies assembled at Miss Peabody’s rooms, in West Street, on the 6th November, 1839.  Twenty-five were present, and the circle comprised some of the most agreeable and intelligent women to be found in Boston and its neighborhood.  The following brief report of this first day’s meeting remains:—­

    ’Miss Fuller enlarged, in her introductory conversation, on
    the topics which she touched in her letter to Mrs. Ripley.

’Women are now taught, at school, all that men are; they run over, superficially, even more studies, without being really taught anything.  When they come to the business of life, they find themselves inferior, and all their studies have not given them that practical good sense, and mother wisdom, and wit, which grew up with our grandmothers at the spinning-wheel.  But, with this difference; men are called on, from a very early period, to reproduce all that they learn.  Their college exercises, their political duties, their professional studies, the first actions of life in any direction, call on them to put to use what they have learned.  But women learn without any attempt to reproduce.  Their only reproduction is for purposes of display.

‘It is to supply this defect,’ Miss Fuller said, ’that these conversations have been planned.  She was not here to teach; but she had had some experience in the management of such a conversation as was now proposed; she meant to give her view on each subject, and provoke the thoughts of others.

’It would be best to take subjects on which we know words, and have vague impressions, and compel ourselves to define those words.  We should have, probably, mortifications to suffer; but we should be encouraged by the rapid gain that comes from making a simple and earnest effort for expression.’

Miss Fuller had proposed the Grecian Mythology as the subject of the first conversations, and now gave her reasons for the choice.