Part 9 (1/2)

As to habits, they were taught regularity, order, cleanliness, and the self-denial in s one another

As to entlewoman as Miss Lyman, not only in all her intercourse with the Faculty and the teachers, but to the pupils, in all the minute details of official and social intercourse, took effect, as no lessons born of foreign travel or intercourse with the world could ever have done It was courtesy growing out of character and conscience; it was not the ularity as Vassar enforced for four years, made it almost certain that these pupils would never fail of that divine blessing for the rest of their lives Theirwere at the proper hours, and sleep was as secure as good health, cheerful minds, and moderate excitement could ood variety, and most careful preparation It is not too irls could ever have seen in their own homes such perfect bread and butter, so abundant milk and meat, or simple delicacies so carefully served without interruption for four years

Their exercise atched by the resident physician, and every flagging step or indifferent recitation was supposed to have two possible bearings, one upon the goodwill of the student, the other upon soeulated by teachers who knehat girls could properly accomplish, and when a question arose it was decided in the only proper way--practically I was present once when a pupil co a lesson in arithht Miss Lyh every process required of the pupil, justified the complaint and corrected the error

In all table hest standard constantly before them, and when they went out into the world at the end of four years, they carried into their varied homes wholly new ideas about dress, food, proprieties, and life

The conditions of a girl's successful groe are told, are to be found in--

1 Abundant and wholeso to her health

3 Work so apportioned as to leave roorowth, beyond the mere repair of tissue, and-- 4 Sleep

In no homes that I know in America, are all these points so completely secured as at Vassar

Every year, about one hundred girls leave this institution, to take their positions in life Some of them are to be teachers, some mothers, soo to either of these lives, ignorant of that upon which faain will they be content with sour bread or a soiled table-cloth; never again will they , or a dull, half-furnished ”living-rooht the virtue which lies in ives to her flowers; they know the health and power given by the labor of their hands and the use of their feet

Fortunately, the girls at Vassar coirls[32] but of those who are younger, ithts upon the circulation, that a girl's real safety is found in steady study or persistent manual labor; the diversion of blood to brain or ans

”I have longed to put my word into this discussion,” wrote an experienced teacher to me from the city of Portland the other day, ”for I hold that hysterics are born of silly mothers and fashi+onable follies, and I find them easily cured by equal doses of ridicule and arithmetic”

The 'arithmetic,' or other severe study that corrects or prevents hts from herself; her functions, and her future, is inperiod of life it may be even more safely said than of any other, that ”constant eh steady, must be varied, so as to shi+ft the effort from one set of powers or muscles to another

I airls require h this period, if the laws of life are properly observed in both cases; and I think that omen and ht on this subject, their testi physicians who now hold the public ear

It is claimed that man is made for sustained, and woman for periodic effort It is by no means certain that this is so, and if it be indeed a law of organization, then it must be a lahich will doirl back fro them is passed, but it will interfere with her steady use of theh her whole life, shut her out from the markets of the world, and unfit her for all steady, consecutive duty, either public or private

Let no girl be deterred from steady and faithful work in the vain fear that she will unsex herself, and to a loving mother's needful anxieties let not this superfluous care be added True, we may all make mistakes as to what is desirable, needful, or possible, but to the huht will always come, and to the preposterous cautions, born of a morbid and unwise interference with the courses of life, I oppose these words quoted froy of Moses,” which it is said that we have not outgrown: ”Ye shall not offer unto the Lord that which is bruised or crushed or broken or cut;” these words are true, whether spoken of a dove's feathers or a girl's soul; or the still later and wiser words, ”Take, therefore, no thought for the s of itself”

The foundations of true manhood and true wo It is true that we may destroy the perfume of life, for uidance, but the fruit of our error is not immortal, and it is never too late to retrieve our false steps

So far fro what is best in either sex, as we advance in life, weyears will find it intensified; that so long as men and women live, they row more manly and more womanly If they draw nearer to each other, as they sit hand in hand looking towards the sunset, it is only because they are both heirs of the i the same end

It is i afresh the subject of co-education But we need not rest upon the family fact or the old common school system

Oberlin was the pioneer in the system of co-education, a system into which she was forced, not so much by fanatical theories as by the cruel hand of poverty For forty-one years she has held up her banner in the wilderness, and in 1868 I found her with nearly twelve hundred pupils

It was very largely to her men and woovernors of States, generals of armies, and mothers of families, or teachers of schools, they kept the nation to its duty Fro in 1868 It is nothing to the arguh a standard of classical attainment as Harvard or Yale, if that should turn out to be the fact For e nu the possibility of co-education, and their graduates are not the unhappy childless women of Massachusetts, but the happy and healthy wo in proportion as they are busy, and whose ”children are plenty as blackberries” Beside these twenty-five colleges, Antioch has been working steadily for twenty-four years, and in addition to the sh New York and the Middle States, Cornell has lately opened her doors to the same system All those who have practical experience of its results kno much wiser, sweeter, and more serene is the life that is shaped by its ument is alike useless and undesirable We uided by the practical result

We are told that public duties arethan private No woman will be found to believe it It may be often difficult to estimate the heavy stake that underlies the small duty