eet there are in a
building lot, but couldn't add up ten shillings to save their lives; of
course they forget how to estimate the square feet for want of having
unlimited building lots to work on, while the washing bill and girl's
wages and such things, come up every day all through their lives.

What _do_ girls learn at the schools?

Oh, a mighty deal that some good women pass half through a lifetime
without knowing, and are just as likely as not all the better for it.
Some of the lessons are paid for, and some are given free gratis for
nothing by the scholars to each other, and what some of them don't know
in the way of flirting, drooping the eyes, and things you never dreamed
of, ain't worth keeping secret.

"A little leaven leavens the whole lump." That passage has always
relieved my feelings about the old patriarchs; for it's a proof that
they and their families had raised bread in those old Bible times; and
light bread, even if saleratus has to be used, is a blessing on the
domestic hearth. For that reason, I'm astonished that bread-making is
left to men-bakers here in York. But this passage sometimes puts you in
mind of something beside turnpike emptins. I should like to promulgate
some genuine old-fashioned ideas into these tip-top schools, where one
bold, forward girl with unwholesome ideas in her head, would set them
working like leaven in every innocent young soul in the seminary.
Somehow, more or less, girls always do manage to give a good deal of
knowledge that isn't set down in the bill, though that is generally long
enough, goodness knows.

I wish you could see one of these bills with the extras. Now in our
district schools, there isn't much chance for the scholars to get over
intimate. They don't sleep and eat and work together, like canary birds
crowded in one cage and huddled together on one roost; the weak don't
catch the faults of the strong, and if they did, the free breezes of our
hills would sweep them away before the poison struck in. Flirtations do
not become a science with them before they can spell "baker," and they
don't often learn such things from their New England mothers, anyhow.

Well, I would give a good deal to see a genuine girl who did not think
herself a marvel of superior knowledge at twelve, or had not plunged
into a heart disease at the sight of some hotel lounger at fourteen. I
tell you, sisters, these young creatures have too much liberty; they
have no wholesome growth eit