-between those who make their marks instead of writing their
names, and those who have been acceptably employed in school-keeping.
Now suppose the whole forty thousand females engaged in the various
kinds of manufactures in that commonwealth to be degraded to the level
of the lowest class, it would follow that their aggregate earnings would
fall at once to two millions of dollars. But, on the other hand, suppose
them all to be elevated by mental cultivation to the rank of the
highest, and their earnings would rise to the sum of six millions of
dollars annually.

There can be no doubt but that education, or the want of it, affects the
pecuniary value of female labor in the ordinary domestic employments of
the sex not less than in manufactures. If, then, the females of the
thirty states of the Union be estimated at eight millions--and the
number sustaining the relations of daughters, wives, and mothers must
exceed the supposition--the effect of giving them all an education equal
to the best would at once raise their earnings, annually, two hundred
millions of dollars! But this is the lowest sense in which we can
estimate the value of education, even in the sterner sex. This sum, vast
as it may seem, is as dross to gold when compared with the refining and
elevating influence which eight millions of educated females would exert
upon the domestic and social institutions of our country, in uplifting
our national character and improving the condition of the race.

Not more than thirty years ago it was uncommon for a glazier's
apprentice, even after having served an apprenticeship of seven years,
to be able to cut glass with a diamond without spending much time and
destroying much of the glass upon which he worked. But the invention of
a simple tool has put it into the power of the merest tyro in the trade
to cut glass with facility, and without loss. A man who had a _mind_, as
well as _fingers_, observed that there was one direction in which the
diamond was almost incapable of abrasion or wearing by use. The tool not
only steadies the diamond, but fastens it in that direction.

The operation of tanning leather consists in exposing a hide to the
action of a chemical ingredient, called tannin, for a length of time
sufficient to allow every particle of the hide to become saturated with
the solution. In making the best leather, the hides used to lay in the
pit for six, twelve, or eighteen months, and sometimes for two years, the