nist,
advanced both in life and opinions, who had spared nothing to make her
niece an example to her sex. No pugilist ever believed more fully in
training than did Miss Willmanson: she looked upon institutions of
learning as forcing-houses, where nipping, budding and improving the
natural growth was the constant occupation, and where the various
branches of knowledge were cultivated, like cabbages, at so much a head.
When Eleanor became, so to speak, her property, she seized with avidity
the opportunity of submitting her principles to the test of
experiment--of demonstrating to an incredulous world the power of
education, and the vigor of the female mind and body when formed by
proper discipline. The child was fed in accordance with the most recent
discoveries in chemistry: she was taught to read after the latest
improvement in primers; she was provided with mathematical toys and
gymnastic exercises. Did she take a walk in summer, her attention was
directed to botany; if she picked up a stone to make it skip over a
passing brook, passages from the _Medals of Creation_ or _Thoughts on a
Pebble_ were quoted; and when the stone went skimming over the surface
of the calm pool, the theory of the ricochet was explained and the
wonders of natural philosophy were dilated upon. Every sentence she
spoke was made the text of a lesson, and the names of sages and
philosophers became as familiar to her as those of Jack the Giant-killer
and Blue Beard are to ordinary children.

Especially were the stories of distinguished women repeated by Miss
Willmanson in glowing language, pointed out as precedents, and dwelt
upon as worthy of emulation. "If their genius was great enough," she
would remark, "to extort a recognition in times when only masculine pens
wrote history, what could not the same ability do now?--now, when,
strengthened by waiting, encouraged by ungrudging praise, and sure of
having chroniclers of their own sex who will do them justice, a new era
is dawning. The history of the world needs to be reseen from a woman's
point of view, and rewritten by a woman's hand. Men have had
the monopoly of making public opinion, and have distorted facts. What in
a king they name policy, in a queen is called cruelty; what in a
minister is diplomacy, in a favorite is deceit; what in a man is
justice, in a woman is inhumanity; vigor is coarseness, generosity is
weakness, sincerity becomes shallowness; and faults that are passed over
lightly