he thirteen hundred young men in the University laced up in
steel-ribbed corsets, with hoops, heavy skirts, trains, high heels,
panniers, chignons, and dozens of hairpins sticking in their scalps,
cooped up in the house year after year, with no exhilarating exercise,
no hopes, aims, nor ambitions in life, and know if they could stand it
as well as the girls. "Nothing," said she, "but the fact that women,
like cats, have nine lives, enables them to survive the present _regime_
to which custom dooms the sex."

While in Ann Arbor I gave my lecture on "Our Girls" in the new Methodist
church--a large building, well lighted, and filled with a brilliant
audience. The students, in large numbers, were there, and strengthened
the threads of my discourse with frequent and generous applause;
especially when I urged on the Regents of the University the duty of
opening its doors to the daughters of the State. There were several
splendid girls in Michigan, at that time, preparing themselves for
admission to the law department. As Judge Cooley, one of the professors,
was a very liberal man, as well as a sound lawyer, and strongly in favor
of opening the college to girls, I had no doubt the women of Michigan
would soon distinguish themselves at the bar. Some said the chief
difficulty in the way of the girls of that day being admitted to the
University was the want of room. That could have been easily obviated by
telling the young men from abroad to betake themselves to the colleges
in their respective States, that Michigan might educate her daughters.
As the women owned a good share of the property of the State, and had
been heavily taxed to build and endow that institution, it was but fair
that they should share in its advantages.

The Michigan University, with its extensive grounds, commodious
buildings, medical and law schools, professors' residences, and the
finest laboratory in the country, was an institution of which the State
was justly proud, and, as the tuition was free, it was worth the trouble
of a long, hard siege by the girls of Michigan to gain admittance there.
I advised them to organize their forces at once, get their minute guns,
battering rams, monitors, projectiles, bombshells, cannon, torpedoes,
and crackers ready, and keep up a brisk cannonading until the grave and
reverend seigniors opened the door, and shouted, "Hold, enough!"

The ladies of Ann Arbor had a fine library of their own, where their
clubs met once a