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of the commonplace legal document which bears her name is that, like many mothers in Israel of that period, she did not sign it personally, but could only make her mark.
All that long and beneficent life, it seems, was not accompanied by the ability to write her name.
This astounding fact not only illustrates the complete change in women's educational position, but it bears on other social problems.
The writer spent an evening in Kansas, forty years ago, with a woman of noble appearance, a Virginian by birth, who was stated to be the first woman who had come to dwell in that Territory.
She had reared a dozen or fifteen sons and daughters, most of whom had accompanied her and her husband to make homes in the newly opened region.
She was still in magnificent health, large and strong, with a fine head and face, and most intelligent bearing.
She might have sat to some sculptor for his symbolic group of “The Pioneers.”
Yet this fine creature could neither read nor write.
Many of the colored men who enlisted in our army during the Civil War showed the same combination of natural force and leadership with the same ignorance; and there has been at least one President of the United States
New York, Harper and Brothers, 1897.
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