I return to the subject. We want our young girl to be all that Romanes
says she is. We desire, too, that she shall be as thoroughly educated in
relation to her needs as her brothers, and that in so training her we
shall not forget that my ideal young person is to marry or not, and, at
all events, is to have a good deal of her life in her home with others,
and should have some resources for minor or self-culture and occupation
besides the larger ones which come of more distinctively intellectual
acquirements.

I turn now to the mother who asks this question, and say, "What of your
boys? Why are you not concerned as to them?" "Oh, boys are never
nervous. One couldn't stand that; but they never are. Girls are so
different." My answer is a long one. I wish I could think that it might
be so fresh and so attractive as to secure a hearing; but the preacher
goes on, Sunday after Sunday, saying over and over the same old truths,
and, like him, with some urgency within me to speak, I can only hope
that I may be able so to restate certain ancient verities as to win for
them a novel respect and a generous acceptation.

The strong animal is, as a rule, the least liable to damaging emotion
and its consequences. Train your girls physically, and, up to the age of
adolescence, as you train your boys. Too many mothers make haste to
recognize the sexual difference. To run, to climb, to swim, to ride, to
play violent games, ought to be as natural to the girl as to the boy.
All this is fast changing for us, and for the better. When I see young
girls sweating from a good row or the tennis-field, I know that it is
preventive medicine. I wish I saw how to widen these useful habits so as
to give like chances to the poor, and I trust the time will come when
the mechanic and the laborer shall insist on public play-grounds as the