The period of examinations is, too, of all others, the time of danger,
and I know of many sad breakdowns due to the exaction and emotional
anxieties of these days of competition and excitement.

Let me once for all admit that many girls improve in health at these
colleges, and that in some of them the machinery of organization for
care of the mental and physical health of their students seems to be all
that is desirable. That it does not work satisfactorily I am sure, from
the many cases I have seen of women who have told me their histories of
defeat and broken health. The reason is clear. The general feeling
(shall I say prejudices?) of such groups of women is bitterly opposed to
conceding the belief held by physicians, that there are in the woman's
physiological life disqualifications for such continuous labor of mind
as is easy and natural to man. The public sentiment of these great
schools is against any such creed, and every girl feels called upon to
sustain the general view, so that this acts as a constant goad for such
as are at times unfit to use their fullest possibility of energy. Modest
girls, caught in the stern mechanism of a system, hesitate to admit
reasons for lessened work or to exhibit signals of failure, and this I
know to be the case. The practical outcome of it all is that the eyes of
home can never be too thoughtfully busy with those of their girls who
have won consent to pursue, away from maternal care, the higher
education of female colleges. I must have wearied that wise mother by
this time, but, perhaps, I have given her more than enough to make her
dread these trials.

I should say something as to the home-life of girls who go through the
ordinary curriculum of city day schools were it not that I have of late
so very fully reconsidered and rewritten my views as to this interesting