Part 21 (1/2)

Fifteen is the e at which any are adirl of fifteen has the poise, the _settledness_ of nerve and muscle and brain to enable her to bear uninjured the ireat family necessitates It is almost impossible for any one who has not tried it to understand this; and parents listen with a polite, incredulous sht young daughters to attempt here the not difficult Latin, mathematics, etc, of the preparatory years We--the parents and I--agree perfectly that the girls can do the work easily enough, but they, the parents, can not see the difference which is so clear to ht years, it could hardly help being--the difference that it will irls whether they do the work in the small classes of the home school, and surrounded in their leisure hours with the freedoe classes that are here necessary, and amid the inevitable excitements, outside the recitation room, of a constant residence in a household of five hundred

Again and again I have seen these young students, for, of course, they enter despite my protestations--everybody wants to see the folly of everything for himself--I have seen them succumb to the unwonted nervous tax within a feeeks; others bear up for o home to spend their suhosts haunt the clinical records of doctors from Texas to Canada, from Maine to California, and whose influence ainst woman's chances for liberal education; for these failures are counted as natural effects of study, of anization cannot endure!

I have no doubt that, for a respectable irls, life here, with its absolute regularity of hygienic regieous than the mixture of school and ”society,” in which they would be peries at home; but that does not alter the fact that the vital needs of immaturity, physical, mental, and moral; cannot be most wholesoreat educational establishment

With those who enter e--fortunately, they are very few--the case is still worse, for, in addition to the nervous tax to which I have alluded above, they atteth The result is inevitable--a stunted, unsatisfactory wo of Nature's law of slow, symmetrical development, is not to be escaped

Dr Clarke's _sex in Education_ puts this point well, and perhaps the little book ic, if it succeeds in awakening the consciences of parents and teachers with regard to this phase of the school question, a phase which bears with equal pertinency upon a fair chance for boys and for girls

When wohteen or twenty the earnest business of a collegiate course, for which they have slowly and thoroughly prepared while their physical organization was her intellectual labor the strength and enthusiase of all the life preeminent and most perfectly balanced, then we shall knohat educated woman is, and learn her possible capacities in all that makes for the noblest humanity

I do not undervalue what Oberlin, Antioch, Mt Holyoke, and other schools have accoly be ranked second to any in according to them the estee Vassar's own Aluracious proood seed noing all over this broad land shall co what she can to pro to her students the wholesoanized activity, which has for its definite aim their preparation for the serious duties of life--duties which trained faculties carry with steady poise, growing strong under the burden, but which press with sad and crushi+ng weight upon unaccustohkeepsie, N Y

ANTIOCH COLLEGE

Of the raduates of Antioch, 13-1/2 per cent have died; of the woraduates, 9-3/4 per cent This of course does not include the war mortality or accidental deaths

Three of the raduate is such

Of the woraduates, three-fourths are o,fro fourth are graduates of longer standing than 1871

It is proposed to make out statistics which shall show the comparative health of those women and men who have been here two years and upward, as it has been suggested that possibly only the stronger could bear the strain of the whole college course, and that the weaker ones dropped out by the way It is perfectly safe now to assert that this is not the case

Yellow Springs, Ohio

LETTER FROM A GERMAN WOMAN

FEBRUARY 6, 1874

DEAR MISS BRACKETT:

I gladly coive you such inforirls in Germany What I have to say is, however, more particularly applicable to the southern portions of that country

Girls generally attend the public school froe of six or seven to eleven, where they occupy themselves with the more elementary branches; afterwards they are placed in a seminary or ”Institut,” in which they ree, if not a ht at ho; private instruction being indeed too expensive even for the best fa-school, if a ood day-school is at all accessible

In ht, and only the elementary branches of science; from reliable sources I hear that the present curriculuirls were thoroughly drilled in German, French, Rhetoric, Composition, Arithlish and Italian were optional The hours extended from nine till twelve, and fro allohich seemed often rather hard One and frequently two hours were spent in needlework, which tilish conversation with an experienced teacher The girls prepared their lessons at ho Their attendance was expected to be _uninterrupted_, and was usually so, even through the critical period of develop and trouble, and these were not frequent I remember but little complaint of headache and weariness--back-ache seeirls worked hard, an to teach when only sixteen, or even younger, and while still pursuing their own studies They went out generally in every weather, and at all times, month in and month out

Nohy did they not break down? Why do we find coirls and women? Are there no other causes at work than a somatic tees and history, the endless practising of _etudes_ and sonatas, the stooping wearily over so to the nervous systeebraic problerant that a small part of the solution can be found in this difference, there are yet other and deeper causes at work One of theirl, while at school, oes to no parties, visits no balls She does not waste her hours of sleep or leisure in putting nuarance, nor does she proentlemen Her amusements are of the siarden in her mother's company; occasionally a concert or an opera, which never lasts later than nine or half-past nine; so school-friends, to which gentlemen are not admitted; once or twice a year, perhaps, after she is fifteen, private theatricals or a _soiree_; where she appears in a simple dress, dances under her mother's care, and returns hoth and husbands her forces for study