ual, mentally, to the thorough
mastering of the higher branches of study. Having been driven from that
position by the indisputable evidence of percentages on written
examinations, they have taken up their new position with the assertion
that women are not able physically to pursue a thorough and complete
course of study--for, I repeat again, that for the masses, co-education
and higher education for women are practically one and the same thing.
In this position of the question, we have only two things for which to
be profoundly thankful: The first is that we, as living women, are
asserted by no one to be composed of more than two parts--spirit and
body. The second is, that we have in our own hands, at last, the means
of finally disposing of this question, by disproving the second
assertion.

To us as women, as wives, as mothers, as older sisters, as friends, as
teachers, as college girls, as school girls, and to us alone, the
settlement of the question has at last been fairly handed over. We have
only, in all these relations, to learn the laws of physical health, and
to obey them, and the whole matter will be set forever at rest. We have
only to see to it, day and night, that our girls are educated into
proper ways of living as regards food, clothing, sleep and exercise,
till we have created for them a second nature of fixed, correct
physical habits--and we alone can do this--and the end is at hand. We
have at last the right to settle our own questions conceded to us. The
responsibility of the decision, whether our girls are to have what we
demand for them--nay, what they themselves are eagerly and persistently
demanding, is decided, by the new position, to belong to us, and to us
alone. Responsibility means duty. Are we ready to accept the one, and to
perform the other?

FOOTNOTES:

[16] On this statement we may perhaps rest, as our present distinct
object is to illustrate mind, and not matter; though any reader will, of
course, be entitled to his own "mental reservations" on the other side,
and his own ideas on the subject of Attraction, etc.

[17] When those who are supposed to be the educated women of America are
really educated, we shall not be pained through our sympathies, in view
of such wide-spread evil as the following paragraph from a recent
editorial of a leading New York journal would seem to attest.

"It must be confessed, we fear, that wives and mothers are responsible
for no little of our too ge