ational opportunities. And almost
immediate is the success of the demand that the school system shall
fit them to the use of those opportunities.

In a small Illinois city there is a woman's college, founded as a
preparatory school in the forties and soon advanced to be a seminary,
which, with Anna P. Sill for its first head, Jane Addams for its
best-known graduate, and Julia Gulliver for its present president, has
come to be a college of standing and of leading. Only Troy Female
Seminary and Mount Holyoke Seminary preceded it, in date of
foundation, among the important women's institutions.

Rockford College is ranked to-day, by the reports of the United States
Commissioner of Education, in rank one--among the sixteen best women's
colleges in the United States. It hasn't risen to that rank by any
quick, money-spurred spurt. It brings with it out of its far past all
the traditions of that early struggle for the higher education which,
by friction, kindled among women so flaming an enthusiasm for pure
knowledge. It remains "collegiate" in the old sense, quiet, cloistral,
inhabiting old-fashioned brick buildings in an old-fashioned large
yard, looking still like the Illinois of war times more than like the
Illinois of the twentieth century, retaining all the home ideals of
those times--a large interest in feminine accomplishments, a strict
regard for manners, a belief in the value of charm.

But here, in this quiet, non-metropolitan college, so really
"academic," so really--in the oldest-fashioned ways--"cultural," here
is a two-year course in Secretarial Studies.

[Illustration: ROCKFORD COLLEGE, IN ROCKFORD, ILLINOIS. IN ITS
OLD-FASHIONED BUILDINGS, WHICH PRESERVE THE SPIRIT OF THE ACADEMIC LIFE
OF THE OLD DAYS, THERE IS NOW A VERY MODERN DEPARTMENT OF SECRETARIAL
STUDIES.]

It is the first time (within our knowledge) that such a thing has
happened in any of the old first-rank women's colleges.

The course in Secretarial Studies at Rockford gives the pupil English,
accounts, commerce, commercial law, and economic history in her first
year, and political science, English, and economics in her second
year. Shorthand and typewriting are required in both years, and a few
hours a week are reserved in each year for elective courses to be
chosen by the pupil among offerings in French, German, Spanish, and
history.

There is here a double concession: first, to the increased need of
"middle class" women for "occupations