t
finding his whole sex put under ban for his shortcomings, and so he
works with a sense of individual power and responsibility which calls
out his energies, and educates him even in spite of the foolish
cosseting of a mother or the narrow pedantry of a teacher.

But in regard to woman, there is a general confession that life is not
yet well adapted to her needs, or she to her place in the world. There
is a perpetual effort to readjust her claims, to define her position,
and to map out her sphere, and these boundary lines are arbitrarily
drawn at every conceivable distance from the centre, so that what seems
extravagant latitude to one, is far within the narrowest limits of
another.

Very few have arrived at the conclusion that woman's nature, like man's,
is self-determining, and that her character and her powers must decide
her destiny; that instead of prescribing the outward limits of her
action, the important point is to increase her energy, to regulate her
activity by self-discipline, to purify her nature by nobility of thought
and sentiment, and then to leave her free to work out her thought into
life as she can and must.

But this, it seems to me, should be the grand leading principle of a
mother in the education of her daughter, to give her such faith in
herself, such knowledge of the laws of her own being, such trust in the
guiding power of the universe, that she will have a principle of life
and growth within her which will react upon all outward circumstances
and turn them into means of education.

It is in this freedom alone that the essential meaning of her nature
will show itself. In free, conscious obedience to law, natural
limitations become a source of power, as the hardness of the marble
gives effect to the sculptor's forming stroke; but all arbitrary
restraints dwarf and deform the growing soul.

But in the very beginning a great difficulty meets the mother of the
girl who seeks to train her up into glad, free acceptance of life, for
instead of general rejoicing in the birth of her child, too often there
is a wail of discontent over the hapless infant who is "not a boy."

It is an idea very deeply grounded in our social feeling, that it is a
misfortune and an indignity to be a woman. True, all men do not, like
the Jews in the old service, insultingly thank God that he has not made
them women, while the meek woman plaintively thanks God that he has made
her at all. But how constantly is the thoug