of the meals and provided them on her own responsibility, being paid $3 or $3.50 a week by every boarder. Each room was kept in order by its occupants, as at Hillsdale. Here, however, we were able during our stay to rent one of the rooms from the stewardess, who supplied us with the needful furniture, and had our room-work done for us by one of her kitchen "helps," whereas at Hillsdale it had fallen perforce on our own shoulders.

The meals were served to all the students who chose to board in Hall, in a portion of what had been a large dining-hall, now separated off by a hoarding from the other portion. The food was good and abundant, and we noticed specially the presence of sorgum molasses at every meal.

This sorgum is a large cane, not unlike the real sugar-cane, that is grown in large quantities in this part of Ohio. We went with the stewardess to see one of the sugar-houses where the molasses are prepared by a succession of processes, beginning with the crushing of the cane in a sort of mill worked by horse-power out of doors, and continued inside the building by several successive

K

boilings till the clear, amber-coloured syrup

is produced.

Several of the professors and teachers boarded in Hall, but the students seemed under somewhat less restraint than at the older colleges. There was more noise during meals, and some disposition to gather round the entrance and gossip afterwards, contrary to rules, but the coming matron was expected to reduce all to order.

There was at the time no regularly appointed President, but the duties of his office were provisionally fulfilled by a minister of the "Christian" persuasion, the beauty of whose life and character, combined with the gentleness and purity of his teaching, could not but exercise a beneficial influence on the students. It was said that his scholarship and business talents were not of an equally high order, and he himself was unwilling to accept office permanently.

Several excellent teachers had just joined the College, but their work had only been begun. It was, indeed, hardly fair to judge of the College at all when in so fragmentary a condition, but yet the spirit of the place,

and the energy and courtesy of the professors and teachers, could not fail to impress us favourably. I hoped at the time that I might be able to pay Antioch another visit when it was in a more settled condition, and warm were the invitations we received to do so; but as this has been impossible, I can only speak of its previous history as I have heard and read it, and of its then condition as I saw it under all disadvantages.

The pledge of non-sectarianism has been well kept at Antioch. In the Bible-class held by Mr. Mann for such as volunteered to attend, “it was his object to make a fair statement of the various interpretations, by different sects, of all disputed portions of the Scriptures, and then leave his hearers to adopt that which seemed to them most correct." "In love and good works," he taught, "all men can unite, whatever tricks their intellects may play them." Students of all persuasions came to the College, and "no student was obliged to attend either the devotional exercises of the day or the Sabbath, who gave conscientious reasons for not so doing."

The sermon on "Work," John ix. 4, that

we heard preached by the provisional President, and the Bible-classes held by him later in the day, gave evidence that an equally liberal and earnest spirit still prevailed at Antioch, a spirit which certainly combined very strong religious feeling with very little dogmatic assertion.

Members of various denominations have from time to time preached from the College pulpit, it being on one occasion occupied even by a female graduate of Oberlin.

The standard of scholarship at Antioch is said to have compared not unfavourably with that of the older Universities, the second President of Antioch (who now occupies the same position at Harvard) assuring me that undergraduates coming from the newer College to the older, were usually able to enter the class corresponding to that they had left.

In one respect only was the standard changed, (for the accommodation of female students, as it is said,) Greek being made optional, or rather, students being allowed to substitute for it the study of Physics.

Mrs. Mann, in speaking of the precision in study so rarely found hitherto among women,

says, "The critical examinations of Antioch College made accurate knowledge indispensable."

The joint education of the sexes was to the first President a matter of some doubt and difficulty at first, but his experience in the mixed normal schools justified the measure to him; and though he never went quite so far as some other teachers on this point,restricting, for instance, the female students to reading instead of reciting their speeches or essays, he never saw practical reason to doubt the wisdom of the system. He considered teaching to be emphatically a woman's mission, having "watched long enough to know that, other things being equal, a woman's teaching is more patient, persistent, and thorough than man's."

The second President of Antioch has assured me that, regarded from a moral point of view, the experiment was a complete success, no grave cause of reproach ever having arisen to discredit the system, and the influence of it on the young men being, as he asserts, especially valuable. This testimony has the greater weight, because the speaker is not so alto