hat may disturb the neighbors; and
generally the teacher thinks that, if he keeps the boys _still_, and
sees that they get their lessons, his duty is done. But a hundred boys
ought not to be kept still. There ought to be noise and motion among
them, in order that they may healthily survive the great changes which
nature is working within them. If they become silent, averse to
movement, fond of indoor lounging and warm rooms, they are going in
far worse ways than any amount of outward lawlessness could bring them
to.

"Smoking and yellow-covered novels are worse than any amount of
hullabaloo; and the quietest boy is often a poor, ignorant victim,
whose life is being drained out of him before it is well begun. If
mothers could only see the series of books that are sold behind
counters to boarding-school boys, whom nobody warns and nobody cares
for,--if they could see the poison, going from pillow to pillow, in
books pretending to make clear the great, sacred mysteries of our
nature, but trailing them over with the filth of utter corruption!
These horrible works are the inward and secret channel of hell, into
which a boy is thrust by the pressure of strict outward rules,
forbidding that physical and out-of-door exercise and motion to which
he ought rather to be encouraged, and even driven.

"It is melancholy to see that, while parents, teachers, and churches
make no provision for boys in the way of amusement, the world, the
flesh, and the devil are incessantly busy and active in giving it to
them. There are ninepin-alleys, with cigars and a bar. There are
billiard-saloons, with a bar, and, alas! with the occasional company
of girls who are still beautiful, but who have lost the innocence of
womanhood, while yet retaining many of its charms. There are theatres,
with a bar, and with the society of lost women. The boy comes to one
and all of these places, seeking only what is natural and proper he
should have,--what should be given him under the eye and by the care
of the Church, the school. He comes for exercise and amusement,--he
gets these, and a ticket to destruction besides,--and whose fault is
it?"

"These are the aspects of public life," said I, "which make me feel
that we never shall have a perfect state till women vote and bear rule
equally with men. State housekeeping has been, hitherto, like what any
housekeeping would be, conducted by the voice and knowledge of man
alone.

"If women had an equal voice in the