124

THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.

privileges or responsibilities have been removed from our hands. Many hesitate about coming to the great Northwest with their families, fearing the loss of educa­tional advantages in our savage wilds. They are greatly surprised when they arrive.

No state in America has more beautiful, commodious and improved school build­ings than we have in the new State of Washingtoner better conducted schools within them. A hamlet is started on some quiet hillside near a running stream, a few cots, a mill, a store, a schoolhouse, and, later, when the children are provided for, a church, and in a year quite a little village, with electric lights, water plant and other modern necessities, has appeared as if by magic.

The High School of Spokane is a beautiful brick structure, with neat play­grounds and green sloping yards. A photograph of it may be seen in the Washing­ton school exhibit, as well as an excellent model carved in wood by the pupils. In every part of the city stand similar buildings, though not so commodious, and other cities of our state are equally well provided. We have agricultural colleges, business colleges, church colleges, and in all of them excellent teachers in every department.

In giving you a brief sketch of the departments of art and educational work in which Washington women are interested, I will present my own city of Spokane as the type, and you will please remember that we have many other cities which to a greater or less degree are repetitions of what is really the leading city of Eastern Washington, though not the oldest.

That art is highest which is most free from things material, hence the goddess of music leads them all. And we are great music lovers in the Northwest. At the con­cert given as a test of the ability of six young ladies to represent us as state singers from Washington at this great fair, in this yet greater Chicago, our large opera house was packed to the doors and hundreds were unable to enter.

The young ladies rendered classical selections in a manner to win storms of applause. Numerous floral tributes crossed the footlights, and when Miss Berry of Walla Walla sang, a shower of roses and lilies fell around her from boxes and balcony. The state has a host of charming singers, and Palouse City is the happy possessor of a ladies’ brass band, which is the pride of Eastern Washington. They play with much skill and accuracy many difficult selections, and are highly applauded in every locality. Their, uniforms are neat and becoming, and they are cultivated ladies, every one of them.

Our Conservatory of Music is conducted entirely by women, with the best teachers obtainable in vocal and instrumental music, physical culture and voice training.

We have a Mozart Club, which employs a professor of high musical ability as instructor, and which presents the compositions of the old masters in a manner to win applause from a critical audience, and which for variety occasionally favors the pub­lic with light opera.

We have a school of oratory, also classes in elocution and movements, excellently managed by women. Spokane is also very proud of its Young Ladies’ Seminary, where all departments of modern education are taught, with teachers who have had the advantage of foreign travel and years of study in Germany in painting and music.

The citizens of Washington are fortunate in all lines of education, and the ad­vantages offered their children, and especially so in the knowledge that their daugh­ters can have such care and instruction at home. If the work continues as it is now so well begun, St. Mary’s will ere long rival the famous schools of the East, to which our daughters have been accustomed to go for finished education.

Several art studios are owned by women who teach in every department of draw­ing and painting. An art league is in active work, with excellent teachers in land­scape painting, china decoration, wood carving, molding and art needlework. Lessons are given by the League, which numbers more ladies than gentlemen by far, at low prices, to those who desire to learn and who cannot afford private lessons.

The paintings in the Washington State buildings are largely the work of her daughters, as are the collection of three hundred varieties of wild flowers done in water colors, and well worth the time of looking over.