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The first missionaries who went into the country fought these theories down, largely by hiring girls to attend school in order to demonstrate the fact that they can learn to read. The girls of Turkey are as bright as those of any country, and generally the languages of Turkey are easier to learn than English, so that in every case the missionary won. He was careful to select bright girls for the tests, and in no instance was there a failure. They demonstrated that it was possible for a girl to learn to read and that in very quick time. A little group of ten girls was gathered into a school in Sivas away back in 1864, and from that time to this the education of this sex has not been neglected. In two years that little school had thirty-two pupils. It became so popular that the Armenian bishop twice anathematized the school and its teachers, but that only tended to advertise it and the number of pupils rapidly increased.

The present High School for Girls, which had only four pupils in 1874 and was located in an old native house, has attained extensive influence and power, not only through the pupils themselves, but through the five hundred and sixty girls in various other schools in the city, all of which are affiliated with this high school, and those in other cities, like Gurum, Tokat, Divrik, Endires, Zara, etc., where all the teachers are its graduates. What is perhaps of equal importance is that the Gregorian priests have founded and are now carrying on similar schools for girls in many of the centres of population in the vilayet, in which the American methods have been adopted, American courses are taught, and American ideas about the education of women are accepted and are in practical operation. This recognition of missionary methods is as sincere as it is general; an imitation is the most genuine endorsement.