History of the Parsis : including their manners, customs, religion and present position : with coloured and other illustrations : in two volumes

CHAP. VI.] ZHE EDUCATION COMMTSSION. 319

Education Commission were gratified beyond expectation with what they heard and saw, and the learned President, the Hon. Dr. W. W. Hunter, and Mr. W. Lee-Warner, an accomplished and distinguished member of the Bombay Civil Service, who was also a member of the Commission, were pleased to express the great satisfaction they felt in seeing the schools and the progress they had made. We cannot do better than quote here their interesting remarks as a valuable testimony of those most competent to judge of the labours of the Parsi Girls’ School Association.

Dr. Hunter, after a few preliminary observations, said :—

“There are two or three points in your address to which I should like for a moment to allude. In the first place, I was much struck by your system of training up your own teaching staff. You educate little girls; then you select the most promising of those girls and train them as teachers; finally, you take the best of your teachers and appoint them your headmistresses and your inspectress of schools. You have asked the Commission to recommend the establishment of a Normal Female School. Well, I hope when such a school is established it will produce as efficient teachers, as able head-mistresses, and as admirable a lady inspectress as this school has done. (Cheers.) I was also pleased to find that you had carried education beyond the eleemosynary stage. That you give instruction, not as a charitable dole, but as a thing worth paying for, and one for which you insist upon payment. This success has been obtained, not by any aid from the State, nor even by rich endowments. You began, ladies and gentlemen, by giving your own personal exertions as unpaid teachers; and you have prospered because you deserved to prosper. But what has impressed me most of