very lightly tasked and the school hours but three or four a day until
they reach the age of seventeen at least. Anything, indeed, were better
than loss of health; and if it be in any case a question of doubt, the
school should be unhesitatingly abandoned or its hours lessened, as at
least in part the source of very many of the nervous maladies with which
our women are troubled. I am almost ashamed to defend a position which
is held by many competent physicians, but an intelligent friend, who has
read this page, still asks me why it is that overwork of brain should be
so serious an evil to women at the age of womanly development. My best
reply would be the experience and opinions of those of us who are called
upon to see how many school-girls are suffering in health from
confinement, want of exercise at the time of day when they most incline
to it, bad ventilation,[1] and too steady occupation of mind. At no
other time of life is the nervous system so sensitive,--so irritable, I
might say,--and at no other are abundant fresh air and exercise so
important. To show more precisely how the growing girl is injured by the
causes just mentioned would lead me to speak of subjects unfit for full
discussion in these pages, but no thoughtful reader can be much at a
loss as to my meaning.

[Footnote 1: In the city where this is written there is, so far as I
know, not one private girls' school in a building planned for a
school-house. As a consequence, we hear endless complaints from young
ladies of overheated or chilly rooms. If the teacher be old, the room is
kept too warm; if she be young, and much afoot about her school, the
apartment is apt to be cold.]

The following remarks I owe to the experience of a friend,[1] a woman,
who kindly permits me to use them in full. They complete what
I have space to add as to the matter of education, and deserve to be