880 HISTORY OF BROOKLYN.

whom twenty-one were males, and sixty-nine females. The number of teachers in the male departments was fifty-five, in the female departments, thirty-five.

The number of pupils registered in male departments during the term was three thousand two hundred and four ; in female departments, the number was one thousand three hundred and sixty-three. In the colored school the register was two hundred and thirty-nine. The average attendance in all the schools was two thousand and seventy-nine.

The evening school is a most efficient means of Americanizing the fo. reigner. These persons are of almost every nationality, of divers views and feelings, have little sympathy in common, and mutually jealous of each other, and in doubt and fear of all about them. But here they are brought together upon the same platform, receive the same instruction in common with others, become acquainted with our habits of thought, and motives of action, learn of our institutions, laws and government, and thus are fitted for the duties and responsibilities of citizenship, and the pleasure and enjoy. ments of the new home of their choice.

OTHER EDUCATIONAL ESTABLISHMENTS.

Packer Collegiate Institute. In the year 1844, a number of citizens of Brooklyn made a successful effort to found, upon a solid and permanent basis, an institution of high order, for the education of girls. The association was incorporated in 1845, under the name of the Brooklyn Female Academy, and in the same year, A. Crittenden, A.M., who had been for twenty years the efficient and successful principal of the Albany Female Academy, assumed its charge. Two substantial brick buildings were erected, the main one, in which were all the school apartments, was about seventy-five by one hundred feet, and four stories high ; the other devoted to the accommodation of pupils from abroad, being about fifty feet square, and of a similar height. These were completed and formally dedicated on the 4th day of May, 1846. The Institute continued to increase in favor until 1853, when its revenue, from tuition alone, amounted to $20,000 per annum, and its number of pupils to six hundred in daily attendance. On the first morning of that year, the larger building, with all its contents, including the large and well selected library, scientific apparatus and cabinets, was entirely destroyed by fire. But a calamity so sudden and disastrous even as this, did not interrupt the operations of the school for a single hour. Through the energy and promptness of' the principal, it was at once established in the neighboring rooms of the Brooklyn Institute, the use of which