w cover
twenty-five acres. The main structure has two large wings, while a
gymnasium; a library building, with thirteen thousand volumes; the
Lyman Williston Hall, with laboratories and art gallery; and the
new observatory, with fine telescope, astronomical clock, and other
appliances, afford such admirable opportunities for higher education
as noble Mary Lyon could hardly have dared to hope for. The property
is worth about three hundred thousand dollars. How different from
the days when half-dollars were given into Miss Lyon's willing hands!
Nearly six thousand students have been educated here, three-fourths of
whom have become teachers, and about two hundred foreign missionaries.
Many have married ministers, presidents of colleges, and leading men
in education and good works.

The board and tuition have become one hundred and seventy-five dollars
a year, only enough to cover the cost. The range of study has been
constantly increased and elevated to keep pace with the growing demand
that women shall be as fully educated as men. Even Miss Lyon, in those
early days, looked forward to the needs of the future, by placing in
her course of study, Sullivan's _Political Class-Book_, and Wayland's
_Political Economy_. The four years' course is solid and thorough,
while the optional course in French, German, and Greek is admirable.
Eventually, when our preparatory schools are higher, all our colleges
for women will have as difficult entrance examinations as Harvard and
Yale.

The housework at Mount Holyoke Seminary requires but half an hour each
day for each of the two hundred and ninety-seven pupils. Much time
is spent wisely in the gymnasium, and in boating on the lake near by.
Habits of punctuality, thoroughness, and order are the outcome of life
in this institution. An endowment of twenty thousand dollars, called
"the Mary Lyon Fund," is now being raised by former students for
the Chair of the Principal. Schools like the Lake Erie Seminary at
Painesville, Ohio, have grown out of the school at South Hadley.
Truly, Mary Lyon was doing a great work, and she could not come down.
Between such a life and the ordinary social round there can be no
comparison.

The English ivy grows thickly over Miss Lyon's grave, covering it like
a mantle, and sending out its wealth of green leaves in the spring. So
each year her own handiwork flourishes, sending out into the world
its strongest forces, the very foundation of the highest
civili