[Illustration: The Library Reading Room]
[Illustration: Art Department Painting]
Various and widely divergent as opinions are in regard to woman’s place in the political sphere, there is fast coming to be unanimity of thought in regard to her intellectual development. Even in Turkey, fathers are beginning to see that their daughters are better, not worse, for being able to read and, write, and civilization is about ready to concede that the intellectual, physical and moral possibilities of woman are to be the only limits to her attainment. Vast strides in the direction of the higher and broader education of women have been made in the quarter of a century since John Vassar founded on the banks of the Hudson the noble college for women that bears his name; and others have been found who have lent willing hands to making broad the highway that leads to an ideal womanhood. Wellesley and Smith, as well as Vassar find their limits all too small for the throngs of eager girlhood that are pressing toward them. The Boston University, honored in being first to open professional courses to women, Michigan University, the New England Conservatory, the North Western University of Illinois, the Wesleyan Universities, both of Connecticut and Ohio, with others of the colleges of the country, have opened their doors and welcomed women to an equal share with men, in their advantages. And in the shadow of Oxford, on the Thames, and of Harvard, on the Charles, womanly minds are growing, womanly lives are shaping, and womanly patience is waiting until every barrier shall be removed, and all the green fields of learning shall be so free that whosoever will may enter.
[Illustration: Art Department Modeling]
[Illustration: Tuning Department]
Among the foremost of the great educational institutions of the day, the New England Conservatory of Music takes rank, and its remarkable development and wonderful growth tends to prove that the youth of the land desire the highest advantages that can be offered them. More than thirty years ago the germ of the idea that is now embodied in this great institution, found lodgment in the brain of the man who has devoted his life to its development. Believing that music had a positive