s now than there were
before, but some rooms have been finished off and are used now, when
before they weren't used at all, and so the house seems bigger. But it
can't be that way with our bodies, for we don't have any new organs
added or finished off to make us women?"

"That is just what is done, my daughter."

"What! New organs added, mother? What can you mean?"

"I mean, dear, that your bodily dwelling is enlarged, not by the
addition of new rooms, but by the completing of rooms that have as yet
not been fitted up for use."

"I don't understand you, mother."

"I suppose not, but I hope to be able to make you understand. You have
studied your bodily house and know of the rooms in the different
stories, the kitchen, laundry, dining-room, picture-gallery and
telegraph office,--in fact, all the rooms or organs that keep you alive;
but there is one part of the house that you have not studied. There are
various rooms or organs which are not needed to keep you alive, and
which have, therefore, been closed. As you approach womanhood, these
organs will wake up and become active, and their activity is what will
make you a woman."

"Why, mother, it sounds like a fairy story, a tale of a wonderful magic
palace, doesn't it? And Clara Downs hasn't got these marvelous rooms?"

"Yes, they are there, but they are evidently not being finished off for
use. I think, however, the girls made the mistake of confounding cause
and effect. They say she is going into consumption because she does not
become a woman. I think she does not become a woman because she is going
into consumption. Do you know why we did not finish off these rooms in
our house sooner?"

"Why, father said he had not the money."

"That is right. He did not say that he did not have the money because he
did not finish off the rooms."

"My, no, that would have been absurd; but I don't see how that applies
to Clara?"

"It needed money to finish off our house; so it needs vitality to change
from girl to woman, and Clara seems not to have the vitality. She is
failing in health, hence she has not vital force to spend in completing
her physical development."

"But, mother, tell me more about this wonderful change. Where are the
new rooms and what is their purpose? I can't really believe that I have
some bodily organs that I never heard of. What are they and where are
they; when will they be finished off? I am all curiosity. Didn't we
study about them in our schoo