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JVomen Lawyers in the United States.

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to be said in defence of the woman lawyer, the list must necessarily be more or less incomplete. Many of the most interesting indeed, is that she exists to quite as nu merical a degree in the married state as in letters which I have received have come that of single-blessedness; so that it cannot to me from ladies whose names I only se be charged against her, any more than it can cured by accident and at the last moment against the college girl of the period, that of my investigations. My first move was to send a circular let she does not marry. Perhaps a majority of the married women lawyers, however, were ter to the Deans of the principal law-schools, wives before they began the study of law, asking whether any women had ever been

enrolled as students many of them study in these schools, or ing in their husbands' would be so enrolled offices; while in sev on application, and for eral instances a young names and addresses couple has entered of women graduates. law-school and taken To all these letters, the entire course to save two, prompt and gether, as will be shown later on in this courteous responses were received, con paper. Webster's first defi taining the desired nition of a lawyer is : information; and as "One versed in the the question where laws, or a practitioner women may study law of law." And inas is pertinent to that of women in law, I will much as lawyers of refer from time to both sexes who have time to the facts con studied but have not tained in these let followed the profes ters. sion in practice are • From the Southern liable to resume it at schools to which I any time, and as it wrote, only one re seems of interest to sponded in favor of know how many wo MARILLA M. RICKER. co-education in law. men have studied law The Cumberland Uni to the point of a de gree or of admission to the bar, as well as versity Law School of Lebanon, Tenn., the the number of actual practitioners, I have Law Department of the Washington and opened up a line of inquiries intended to Lee University in Lexington, Va., and the secure the names at least of all such women Law Department of the University of Vir in the country. But as many addresses ginia, do not admit women as students. have been lost, especially by means of the It is possible that the time may not be far distant, however, when women will not somewhat inconvenient custom of chang ing a woman's name at marriage, and as be refused admission to the law schools of it is a very difficult matter to get trace of Virginia, for even now a woman is knock women who have lately studied in offices ing at the bar of that State for admission. and been quietly admitted to the bar in Mrs. Annie Smith, wife of P A. L. Smith, States where such an occurrence is no Esq., an attorney in Danville, Va, has longer so rare as to create any sensation, studied law the past two years and a half