custom of centuries can not render decent. Yet the professors of delicacy connive, and the Mother Geese sit smirking at the wall. Oh, world of hypocrites and humbugs!" "I am afraid you are an upsetter general," said Vizard. "But you are abominably sincere, and all this is a curious chapter of human nature. Pray proceed." allowed to sit down to botany with males. | ous dancing, not even with the gentleman's Mind you, we might have gathered black- arm round the ladies' waists-which the berries with them in umbrageous woods from morn till dewy eve, and not a professor shocked in the whole Faculty; but we must not sit down with them to an intellectual dinner of herbs, and listen, in their company, to the pedantic terms and childish classifications of botany, in which kindred properties are ignored. Only the male student must be told in public that a fox-glove is Digitalis purpurea in the improved nomenclature of science, and crow-foot is Ranun-ion for this, and the blind flunkyism which culus sceleratus, and the buckbean is Menyanthes trifoliata, and mug-wort is Artemesia judaica; and that, having lost the properties of hyssop, known to Solomon, we regain our superiority over that learned Hebrew by christening it Gratiola officinalis. The sexes must not be taught in one room to discard such ugly and inexpressive terms as Miss Gale nodded gravely, and resumed: "So much public ridicule fell on the un could believe the Queen had meddled in the detail, that the professors melted under it, and threw open botany and natural history to us, with other collateral sciences. "Then came the great fight, which is not ended yet. "To qualify for Medicine, and pass the stiff examination by which the public is very snow-drop, meadow-sweet, feverfew, properly protected, you must be versed in heart's-ease, cowslip, etc., and learn to know anatomy and clinical surgery. Books and the cowslip as Veris-by class, pentandria lectures do not suffice for this without the monogynia; and the buttercup as Acris, poly- human subject—alive and dead. The Uniandria monogynia; the snow-drop as Galan-versity Court knew that very well when it thus nivalis, Hexandria monogynia; and the matriculated us, and therefore it provided meadow-sweet as Ulnaria; the heart's-ease for our instruction by promising us separate as Viola tricolor; and the daisy as Bellis pe- classes. rennis, Syngenesia superflua.” "Well," said Vizard, “I think the individual names can only hurt the jaws and other organs of speech. But the classifications! Is the mild lustre of science to be cast over the natural disposition of young women toward polyandria monogynia? Is trigamy to be identified in their sweet souls with floral innocence, and their victims sitting by ?" "Backed by this public pledge, we waited on the University Professor of Anatomy to arrange our fees for a separate lecture. He flatly refused to instruct us separately for love or money, or to permit his assistants. That meant 'the union sees a way to put you in a cleft stick and cheat you out of your degree, in spite of the pledge the University has given you; in spite of your fees, and of your time given to study in reliance on the promise.' "This was a heavy blow. But there was an extramural establishment called Sur "Such classifications are puerile and fanciful," said Miss Gale; "but for that very reason they don't infect animals with trigamy. Novels are much more likely to do that." "Especially ladies' novels,” suggested Viz-geons' Hall, and the University formally recard, meekly. "Some," suggested the accurate Rhoda. "But the sexes will never lose either morals or delicacy through courses of botany endured together. It will not hurt young ladies a bit to tell them in the presence of young gentlemen that a cabbage is a thalamifloral exogen, and its stamens are tetradynamous, nor that the mushroom, Psalliata campestris, and the toad-stool, Myæna campestris, are confounded by this science in one class, Cryptogamia. It will not even hurt them to be told that the properties of the Arum maculatum are little known, but that the males are crowded round the centre of the spadix, and the females seated at the base." ognized all the lecturers in this Hall; so we applied to those lecturers, and they were shocked at the illiberality of the University professors, and admitted us at once to mixed classes. We attended lectures with the male students on anatomy and surgery, and of all the anticipated evils, not one took place, Sir. "The objections to mixed classes proved to be idle words; yet the old-fashioned minds opposed to us shut their eyes and went on reasoning a priori, and proving that the evils which they saw did not arise must arise should the experiment of mixed classes, which was then succeeding, ever be tried. "To qualify us for examination, we now needed but one thing more-hospital practice. Said Vizard, pompously, "The pulpit and The infirmary is supported not so the tea table are centres of similar phenom- much by the University as the town. We ena. Now I think of it, the pulpit is a very applied, therefore, with some confidence for fair calyx, but the tea table is sadly squat." the permission usually conceded to medical "Yes, Sir. But more than that: not one students. The managers refused us the town of these pedants who growled at promiscu- infirmary. Then we applied to the subscribous botany has once objected to promiscu-ers. The majority, not belonging to a trades union, declared in our favor, and intimated | less women who pursued medicine as a hanplainly that they would turn out the illib- dle for sexuality; who went into the diseral managers at the next election of managers. "But by this time the war was hot and general, and hard blows dealt on both sides. It was artfully suppressed by our enemies in the profession and in the press that we had begged hard for the separate class which had been promised us in anatomy, and permission to attend, by ourselves, a limited number of wards in the infirmary; and on this falsehood by suppression worse calumnies were built. "I shall tell you what we really were, and what foul mouths and pens insinuated we must be. secting-room to dissect males, and into the hospital to crowd round the male patient, and who demanded mixed classes, that we might have male companions in those studies which every feminine woman would avoid altogether. "This key-note struck, the public was regaled with a burst of hypocrisy such as Molière never had the luck to witness, or, oh! what a comedy he would have written! "The immodest sex, taking advantage of Molière's decease without heirs of his brains, set to work in public to teach the modest sex modesty. "Now the medical student surpasses most young men in looseness of life and indecency of mind and speech. "In the conduct of this pleasant paradox, "Two accomplished women had joined us, the representatives of that sex which has and we were now the seven wise virgins of much courage and little modesty were two a half-civilized nation, and, if I know black professors-who conducted the paradox so from white, we were seven of its brightest judiciously that the London press repriornaments. We were seven ladies, who wish-manded them for their foul insinuationsed to be doctresses, especially devoted to our and a number of young men called medical own sex; seven good students, who went on students. our knees to the University for those separate classes in anatomy and clinical surgery which the University was bound in honor to supply us; but, our prayer rejected, said "The representatives of womanhood to to the University: 'Well, use your own dis-be instructed in modesty by these animals, cretion about separate or mixed classes; but old and young, were seven prudes, whose for your own credit and that of human na-minds were devoted to study and honorature, do not willfully tie a hangman's noose to throttle the weak and deserving, and don't cheat seven poor, hard-working, meritorious women, your own matriculated students, out of our entrance fees, which lie to this day in the University coffers, out of the exceptionally heavy fees we have paid to your professors, out of all the fruit of our hard study, out of our diplomas, and our bread. Solve the knot your own way. We will submit to mixed classes, or any thing except professional destruction.' ble ambition. These women were as much above the average of their sex in feminine reserve and independence of the male sex as they were in intellect. "The average girl, who throughout this discussion was all of a sudden puffed as a lily, because she ceased to be observed, can attend to nothing if a man is by; she can't work, she can't play, she is so eaten up with sexuality. The frivolous soul can just manage to play croquet with females; but, enter a man upon the scene, and she does even that very ill, and can hardly be got to take her turn in the only thing she has really given her mind to. We were angels compared with this paltry creature; and she was the standing butt of public censure until it was found that an imaginary picture of her could be made the handle for insult "In this spirit our lion-hearted leader wrote the letter of an uninjured dove, and said there were a great many more wards in the infirmary than any male student could or did attend; we would be content to divide the matter thus: the male students to have the monopoly of two-thirds, we to have the bare right of admission to one-ing her betters. third. By this the male students (if any) who had a sincere objection to study the sick and witness operations in our company could never be troubled with us, and we, though less favored than the male students, could just manage to qualify for that public examination which was to prove whether we could make able physicians or not. "Sir, this gentle proposal was rejected with rude scorn, and in aggressive terms. Such is the spirit of a trades-union. "Having now shown you what we were, I will now tell what our enemies, declining to observe our conduct, though it was very public, suggested we must be. Seven shame "Against these seven prudes; decent dotards and their foul-mouthed allies flung out insinuations which did not escape public censure; and the medical students declared their modesty was shocked at our intrusion into anatomy and surgery, and petitioned against us. Some of the Press were deceived by this for a time, and hurlaient avec les loups. "I took up, one day, my favorite weekly, in which nearly every writer seems to me a scholar, and was regaled with such lines as this: "It appears that girls are to associate with boys as medical students, in order that, when they become women, they may be able to speak to men with entire plainness upon all the subjects of a doctor's daily practice. "In plain words, the aspirants to medicine and surgery desire to rid themselves speedily and effectually of that modesty which nature has planted in women.' And then the writer concludes: 'We beg to suggest that there are other places besides dissecting-rooms and hospitals where those ladies may relieve themselves of the modesty which they find so troublesome. But fathers naturally object to this being done at their sons' expense."" "Infamous!" cried Vizard. "One comfort-no man ever penned that. That is some old woman writing down young ones." "I don't know," said Rhoda. "I have met so many womanish men in this business. All I know is, that my cheeks burned, and, for once in the fight, scalding tears ran down them. It was as if a friend had spat upon me. "What a chimera! What a monstrous misinterpretation of pure minds by minds impure! To us the dissecting-room was a temple, and the dead an awe, revolting to all our senses, until the knife revealed to our minds the Creator's hand in structural beauties, that the trained can appreciate, if wicked dunces can't. "And as to the infirmary, we should have done just what we did at Zurich. We held a little aloof from the male patients, unless some good-natured lecturer or pupil gave us a signal, and then we came forward. If we came uninvited, we always stood behind the male students: but we did crowd round the beds of the female patients, and claimed the inner row: AND, SIR, THEY THANKED GOD FOR US OPENLY. "A few awkward revelations were made during this discussion. A medical student had the candor to write and say that he had been at a lecture, and the professor had told an indelicate story, and, finding it palatable to his modest males, had said, 'There, gentlemen; now if female students were admitted here, I could not have told you this amusing circumstance.' So that it was our purifying influence he dreaded in secret, though he told the public he dreaded the reverse. sit calmly down and fling dirt upon every woman who shall aspire to medicine in an island, though she can do so on a neighboring continent with honor, and choose their time when the dirt can only fall on seven known women-since the female students in that island are only seven-the pretended generality becomes a cowardly personality, and wounds as such, and excites less coldhearted and more hot-headed blackguards to outrage. It was so at Philadelphia, and it was so at Edinburgh. "Our extramural teacher in anatomy was about to give a competitive examination. Now on these occasions we were particularly obnoxious. Often and clearly as it had been proved, by a priori reasoning, that we must be infinitely inferior to the average male, we persisted in proving, by hard fact, that we were infinitely his superior; and every examination gave us an opportunity of crushing solid reasons under hollow fact. "A band of medical students determined that for once a priori reasoning should have fair play, and not be crushed by a thing so illusory as fact. Accordingly, they got the gates closed, and collected round them. We came up, one after another, and were received with hisses, groans, and abusive epithets. "This mode of reasoning must have been admirably adapted to my weak understanding; for it convinced me at once I had no business there; and I was for private study directly. "Again, female patients wrote to the jour-produced bottles, drank, smoked, and abused nals to beg that female students might be admitted to come between them and the brutal curiosity of the male students, to which they were subjected in so offensive a way that more than one poor creature declared she had felt agonies of shame, even in the middle of an agonizing operation. "This being a cry from that public for whose sake the whole clique of physicians -male and female-exists, had, of course, no great weight in the union controversy. "But, Sir, if grave men and women will us ladies to our faces, and interrupted the lecturer at intervals with their howls and ribaldry; that was intended to show the professor he should not be listened to any more if he admitted the female students. The affair got wind, and other students, not connected with medicine, came pouring in, with no worse motive, probably, than to see the lark. Some of these, however, thought the introduction of the sheep unfair to so respected a lecturer, and proceeded to remove her; but the professor put up his hand, and said, 'Oh, don't remove her: she is superior in intellect to many persons here present.' "At the end of the lecture, thinking us in actual danger from these ruffians, he offered to let us out by a side door; but our lioness' stood up, and said, in a voice that rings in my ear even now, 'Thank you, Sir; no. There are gentlemen enough here to escort us safely.' "The magic of a great word from a great heart at certain moments when minds are heated! At that word, Sir, the scales fell from a hundred eyes; manhood awoke with a start-ay, and chivalry too; fifty manly fellows were round us in a moment, with glowing cheeks and eyes, and they carried us all home to our several lodgings in triumph; the cowardly caitiffs of the trades-union howled outside, and managed to throw a little dirt upon our gowns, and also hurled epithets, most of which were new to me; but it has since been stated, by persons more versed in the language of the canaille, that no fouler terms are known to the dregs of mankind. "Thus did the immodest sex, in the person of the medical student, outrage seven fair samples of the modest sex-to teach them modesty. "Next morning the police magistrates dealt with a few of our teachers, inflicted severe rebukes on them, and feeble fines. "The craftier elders disowned the riot in public, but approved it in private, and continued to act in concert with it, only with cunning, not violence. It caused no honest revulsion of feeling, except in the disgusted public, and they had no power to help us. “The next incident was a stormy debate by the subscribers to the infirmary; and here we had a little feminine revenge, which, outraged as we had been, I hope you will not grudge us. "Our lioness subscribed £5, and became entitled to vote and speech. As the foulest epithets had been hurled at her by the union, and a certain professor had told her, to her face, no respectable woman would come to him and propose to study medicine, she said, publicly, that she had come to his opinion, and respectable women would avoid him-which caused a laugh. "She also gave a venerable old physician, our bitter opponent, a slap that was not quite so fair. His attendant had been concerned in that outrage, and she assumed-in which she was not justified-that the old doctor approved. To be sure,' said she, 'they say he was intoxicated, and that is the only possible excuse.' "The old doctor had only to say that he did not control his assistants in the street, and his own mode of conducting the opposition and his long life of honor were there to correct this young woman's unworthy sur mises-and she would have had to apologize for going too far on mere surmise. But, instead of that, he was so injudicious as to accuse her of foul language, and say, 'My attendant is a perfect gentleman; he would not be my attendant if he were not.' "Our lioness had him directly. 'Oh,' said she, if Doctor So-and-so prefers to say that his attendant committed that outrage on decency when in his sober senses, I am quite content.' "This was described as violent invective by people with weak memories, who had forgotten the nature of the outrage our lioness was commenting on: but in truth it was only superior skill in debate, with truth to back it. "For my part, I kept the police report at the time, and have compared it with her speech; the judicial comments on those rioters are far more severe than hers. The truth is, it was her facts that hit too hard, not her expressions. "Well, Sir, she obtained a majority; and those managers of the infirmary who objected to female students were dismissed, and others elected. At the same meeting the Court of Contributors passed a statute making it the law of the infirmary that students should be admitted without regard to sex. "But as to the mere election of managers, the other party demanded a scrutiny of the votes, and instructive figures came out. There voted with us twenty-eight firms, thirty-one ladies, seven doctors. "There voted with the union fourteen firms, two ladies, thirty-seven doctors, and three druggists. "Thereupon the trades-union, as declared by the figures, alleged that firms ought not to vote. Nota bene, they always had voted unchallenged, till they voted for fair play to women. "The union served the Provost with an interdict not to declare the new managers elected. "We applied for our tickets under the new statute, but were impudently refused, under the plea that the managers must first be consulted: so did the servants of the infirmary defy the masters, in order to exclude us. "By this time the great desire of women to practice medicine had begun to show itself. Numbers came in, and matriculated; and the pressure on the authorities to keep faith, and relax the dead lock they had put us in, was great. "Thereupon the authorities, instead of saying, 'We have pledged ourselves to a great number of persons, and pocketed their fees,' took fright, and cast about for juggles. They affected to discover all of a sudden that they had acted illegally in matriculating female students. They would, therefore, not give back their fees, and pay them two hundred pounds apiece for breach of contract, but detain their fees and stop their studies until compelled by judicial decision to keep faith. Observe, it was under advice of the Lord Justice-General they had matriculated us, and entered into a contract with us, for fulfilling which it was not, and is not, in the power of any mortal man to punish them. "But these pettifoggers said this: We have acted illegally, and therefore not we, but you, shall suffer: we will profit by our illegal act, for we will cheat you out of your fees to the University, and your fees to its professors, as well as the seed-time of your youth, that we have wasted.' "Now in that country they can get the opinions of the judges by raising what they call an action of declarator. "One would think it was their business to go to the judges, and meantime give us the benefit of the legal doubt, while it lasted, and of the moral no-doubt, which will last till the day of judgment, and a day after. ing of, and flung the dirt of their streets, and the filth of their souls, after me? I was frightened a little, that is all. But that these reptiles could wound my darling old lion's heart across the ocean- Sir, he was a man who could be keen and even severe with men: but every virtuous woman was a sacred thing to him; had he seen one, though a stranger, insulted, as we were, he would have died in her defense; he was a true American. And to think the dregs of mankind could wound him for his daughter, and so near the end of his own dear life! Oh!" She turned her head away. "My poor girl!" said Vizard, and his own voice was broken. When he said that she gave him her hand, and seemed to cling to it a little; but she turned her head away from him, and cried, and even trembled a little. But she very soon recovered herself, and said she would try to end her story. It had been long enough. "Sir, my father had often obeyed me; but now I knew I must obey him. I got testimonials in Edinburgh, and started south directly; in a week I was in the south of France. Oh, what a change in people's minds by mere change of place! The professors received me with winning courtesy; some hats were lifted to me in the street with marked respect; flowers were sent to my lodgings, by gentlemen who never once "Not a bit of it. They deliberately broke their contract with us, kept our fees, and cheated us out of the article we had bought of them, disowned all sense of morality, yet shifted the burden of law on to our shoulders. Litigation is long. Perfidy was in possession. Possession is nine points. The female students are now sitting with their hands before them, juggled out of their studies in plain defiance of justice and pub-intruded on me in person. I was in a civillic faith, waiting till time shall show them whether provincial lawyers can pettifog as well as trades-union doctors. "As for me, I had retired to civilized climes long before this. I used to write twice a week to my parents; but I withheld all mention of the outrage at Surgeons' Hall. I knew it would give them useless pain. But in three weeks or so came a letter from my father, unlike any other I ever knew him write. It did not even begin, 'My dear child.' This was what he said. The words are engraved in my memory: 'Out of that nation of cowards and skunks: out of it this moment, once and forever. The States are your home. Draft on London inclosed. Write to me from France next week, or write to me no more. Graduate in France. Then come north, and sail from Havre to New York. You have done with Britain, and so have I, till our next war. Pray God that mayn't be long!' "It was like a lion's roar of anguish. I saw my dear father's heart was bursting with agony and rage at the insult to his daughter, and I shed tears for him those wretches had never drawn from me. "I had cried at being insulted by scholars, in the Press; but what was it to me that the scum of the medical profession, which is the scum of God's whole creation, called me words I did not know the mean ized land. Yet there was a disappointment for me. I inquired for Cornelia. The wretch had just gone and married a professor. I feared she was up to no good, by her writing so seldom of late. "I sent her a line that an old friend had returned, and had not forgotten her, nor our mutual vows. She came directly, and was for caressing away her crime, and dissolving it in crocodile tears; but I played the injured friend and the tyrant. "Then she curled round me, and coaxed, and said, 'Sweetheart, I can advance your interests all the better. You shall be famous for us both. I shall be happier in your success than in my own.' "In short, she made it very hard to hold spite; and it ended in feeble-minded embraces. Indeed, she was of service to me. I had a favor to ask; I wanted leave to count my Scotch time in France. "My view was tenable; and Cornelia, by her beauty and her popularity, gained over all the professors to it but one. He stood out. "Well, Sir, an extraordinary occurrence befriended me: no, not extraordinary-unusual. "I lodged on a second floor. The first floor was very handsome. A young Englishman and his wife took it for a week. She |