which must have precedence and must accompany every step of
their education, making them fit to bear heavier responsibilities, to
control their own larger independence, to stand against the current of
disintegrating influences that will play upon them. To be fit for higher
education calls for much acquired self-restraint, and unfortunately it
is on the contrary sometimes sought as an opening for speedier
emancipation from control. Those who seek it in this spirit are of all
others least fitted to receive it, for the aim is false, and it gives a
false movement to the whole being. Again, when it is entirely
dissociated from the realities of life, it tends to unfit girls for any
but a professional career in which they will have--at great cost to their
own well-being--to renounce their contact with those primeval teachers of
experience.

In some countries they have found means of combining both in a modified
form of university life for girls, and in this they are wiser than we.
Buds of the same tree have been introduced into England, but they are
nipped by want of appreciation. We have still to look to our
foundations, and even to make up our minds as to what we want. Perhaps
the next few years will make things clearer. But in the meantime there
is a great deal to be done; there is one lesson that every one concerned
with girls must teach them, and induce them to learn, that is the lesson
of self-command and decision. Our girls are in danger of drifting and
floating along the current of the hour, passive in critical moments,
wanting in perseverance to carry out anything that requires steady
effort. They are often forced to walk upon slippery ground; temptations
sometimes creep on insensibly, and at others make such sudden attacks
that the thing all others to be dreaded for girls is want of courage and
decision of character. Those render them the best service who train them
early to decide for themselves, to say yes or no definitely, to make up
their mind promptly, not because they "feel like it" but for a reason
which they know, and to keep in the same mind which they have reasonably
made up. Thus they may be fitted by higher moral education to receive
higher mental training according to their gifts; but in any case they
will be prepared by it to take up whatever responsibilities life may
throw upon them.

The future of girls necessarily remains indeterminate, at least until
the last years of their education, but the long