ds every cranny
of her life. Parents object to every lesson out of school, so the whole
period of preparation and recitation is pressed into the school-hours.
Her dress is wholly unsuited to health; and when I say this, I wish to
be understood as saying nothing in favor of bloomers or any other
special dress. An intelligent woman can decide for herself and her
children as to what need of change there is in her dress; and many of us
have worn for half a century clothes that were loose, well adjusted, and
healthful, without drawing attention to any peculiarity. Nor must there
be any tyrannical dictation on this subject. Some of us prefer to rest
our clothes upon our shoulders; some of us are only comfortable when
they depend upon the hips. It cannot be denied that the heavily-weighted
skirts now in vogue are uncleanly and unwholesome, even when worn short;
and while school-girls elaborate, friz, powder, and puff their hair like
their elders, and trim their dresses to such excess, it will be
impossible for them to find time for consecutive study. Every separate
curl, lace, or fold, becomes a separate cause of worry; and "worry" lies
at the bottom of American degeneracy, male and female.

Every heart in this country came to a sudden pause the other day, when
the name of Agassiz was moaned out by the funeral-bells of Cambridge.
Who ever worked harder than he? "Without haste, yet without rest," his
summer's recreation became the hardest work of the world; but in his
life an ever-flowing cheerfulness, and a genial welcome for any honest
soul, showed the healthfulness of his busy walk. If anything shortened
his three-score and ten years, it was the care and anxiety which
insufficient appropriation and political indifference or chicanery
crowded into his later life.

The scholar, young or old, must keep a calm and well-poised mind. Let
our mothers consider whether this is possible to children upon whom the
follies of mature life are crowded in infancy.

If in idle moments the children of this generation take up a book, it is
no longer a simple Bible story, or a calm classic of the English tongue,
but the novels of Miss Braddon, Mrs. Southworth, or Mrs. Wood wake them
into a premature life of the imagination and the senses. Before they are
six years old they hold weddings for their dolls, enact love scenes in
their tableaux, or go to theatrical exhibitions as stimulating as the
"Black Crook," if less offensive to the taste. The