ure also of meeting Mrs. Peter Taylor,
founder of a college for working women; she and her husband had been
very friendly to the Northern side during the civil war.

An important movement had been set on foot just at this time by Mrs.
Grey and her sister, Miss Sherret. This was the institution of schools
for girls of the middle class, whose education, up to that time, had
usually been conducted at home by a governess. Mrs. Grey encountered a
good deal of opposition in carrying out her plans. She invited me to
attend a meeting in the Albert Hall, Kensington, where these plans were
to be fully discussed. The Bishop of Manchester spoke in opposition to
the proposed schools. He took occasion to make mention of a visit which
he had recently made to the United States, and to characterize the
education there given to girls as merely "ambitious." The scheme, in his
view, involved a confusion of ranks which, in England, would be
inadmissible. "Lady Wilhelmina from Grosvenor Square," he averred,
"would never consent to sit beside the grocer's daughter."

I was invited to speak after the bishop, and could not avoid taking him
up on this point. "In my own country," I said, "the young lady who
corresponds to the lady from Grosvenor Square does sit beside the
grocer's daughter, and when the two have enjoyed the same advantages of
education, it is not always easy to be sure which is which." I had been
privately requested to say nothing about woman suffrage, to which Mrs.
Grey had not then given in her adhesion. I did, however, mention the
opening of the professions to women in my own country. Mrs. Grey thanked
me for my speech, but said, "Oh, dear Mrs. Howe, why did you speak of
the women ministers?" Some five or six years after this time I chanced
to meet Mrs. Grey in Rome. She assured me that the middle-class schools
had proved a great success, and said that young girls differing much
from each other in social rank had indeed sat beside each other, without
difficulty or trouble of any kind. I had heard that Mrs. Grey had become
a convert to woman suffrage, and asked her if this was true. She
replied, "Oh, yes; the moment that I began practically to work for
women, I found the suffrage an absolute necessity."

One of my pleasantest recollections of my visit to England is that of a
day or two passed in Cambridge, where I enjoyed the hospitality of
Professor J. R. Seeley, author of "Ecce Homo." I do not now recall the
circumstances w