ay--practically. I was present once when a
pupil complained to Hannah Lyman of the impossibility of preparing a
lesson in arithmetic in the prescribed time. That night Miss Lyman sat
late over her own slate, and by going slowly through every process
required of the pupil, justified the complaint and corrected the error.

In all table manners and social life, the girls at Vassar had the
highest standard constantly before them, and when they went out into the
world at the end of four years, they carried into their varied homes
wholly new ideas about dress, food, proprieties, and life.

The conditions of a girl's successful growth, we are told, are to be
found in--

1. Abundant and wholesome food.
2. Care in all relating to her health.
3. Work so apportioned as to leave room for growth,
beyond the mere repair of tissue, and--
4. Sleep.

In no homes that I know in America, are all these points so completely
secured as at Vassar.

Every year, about one hundred girls leave this institution, to take
their positions in life. Some of them are to be teachers, some mothers,
some housekeepers for father or brother, but they will not go to either
of these lives, ignorant of that upon which family comfort depends.

Never again will they be content with sour bread or a soiled
table-cloth; never again will they mistake arrogant self-assertion for
good-breeding, or a dull, half-furnished "living-room" for a cheerful
parlor. They have all been taught the virtue which lies in mother earth,
and the fragrance she gives to her flowers; they know the health and
power given by the labor of their hands and the use of their feet.
Fortunately, the girls at Vassar come under few of the precautions
required for growing girls[32] but of those who are younger, it may be
said that the impending maidenhood sometimes makes such heavy draughts
upon the circulation, that a girl's real safety is found in steady study
or persistent manual labor; the diversion of blood to brain or muscles
relieving the more sensitive growing organs.

"I have longed to put my word into this discussion," wrote an
experienced teacher to me from the city of Portland the other day, "for
I hold that hysterics are born of silly mothers and fashionable follies,
and I find them easily cured by equal doses of ridicule and arithmetic."
The 'arithmetic,' or other severe study that corrects or prevents morbid
notions, that diverts a girl's thoughts from herself; her functions, a