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444 FAMOUS LIVING AMERICANS handed her a paper passing her for the whole college conrse in American history, having gleaned from his conversation with her that she knew all that a written examination would call for. Her reading and study of the New York Indepen- dent had been the chief source of her knowledge. In 1875 she entered the theological department of Boston University, and was the only woman in a class of forty-two young men. Although at the end of the college conrse she passed an excellent examination, she was refused ordination by the New England Methodist Episcopal Conference on ac- count of her sex. She appealed to the General Conference of the same Church, which was then in session at Cincinnati, and the action of the lower Conference in refusing to ordain her was sustained. Later she appealed to the New York Confer- ence of the Methodist Protestant Church and was the first woman ordained in that denomination. After her application was sent in to this Conference she was smnmoned for an inter- view. After she had been questioned she was asked to retire. She waited in the hall for awhile, thinking it would take them about ten minutes — but they argued her case for two whole days. She was recalled and questioned as to what she believed Paul meant when he said, ** Wives, obey your husbands.'* She said that if he did mean what he said that it did not apply to her because she had no husband to obey. They parried by say- ing that she might have. She replied that they were right and that consequently if they believed what Paul said the only thing they could do was to ordain her ; because she might have a husband who would command her to preach, and she could not obey him unless they ordained her. She held pastorates in Hingham, Dennis and East Dennis^ Massachusetts. She was the first ordained woman to preach in Denmark, Germany, Holland, Sweden, Hungary, Italy, and Norway. It is a most remarkable fact that, while in Norway women had full parliamentary franchise, they could not be or- dained as ministers nor speak in the pulpits of the State Church ; but as a result of the agitation on account of Miss Shawns preaching there, the question was taken up by the gov-