period of development arrives, study should be carefully
watched to make sure there is no overwork; the character of the reading
and the lessons should be guided, so that neither may tend to excite a
precocious development of the passions or the senses.

Anatomy may be profitably studied at this period; but just as the
specialist turned his patient away from his loaded shelves, lest her own
maladies should be increased by a morbid study of their source, I would
keep developing girls and boys from a careful study of their own
functions.

If they are trained to quiet obedience, they will grow up in health
precisely in proportion to the skill with which their thoughts are
diverted from themselves to subjects of wider interest and more
entertaining suggestion.

In conclusion I must say, that education is to be adapted neither to
boys nor to girls, but to individuals.

The mother, or the teacher, has learned little who attempts to train any
two children alike, whether as regards the books they are to study, the
time it is to take, the attitudes they are to assume, or the amusements
they are to be allowed.

CAROLINE H. DALL.

141 Warren Avenue, Boston.

FOOTNOTES:

[32] Pupils usually enter at or after the age of eighteen.

EFFECTS OF MENTAL GROWTH.

"Clear away the parasitic forms
That seem to keep her up, but drag her down;
Leave her space to bourgeon out of all
Within her."

EFFECTS OF MENTAL GROWTH

A few years since, when Mr. Higginson's essay "Ought Women to learn the
Alphabet?" first appeared in the _Atlantic Monthly_, and I was reading
some of its keen sarcasms to a gentleman just returned from a tour of
Eastern travel, he related a bit of his recent experience in the old
city of Sychar, in Samaria. There was pointed out to him as an object of
great interest and attention, a remarkable girl. She was the theme of
animated discussion throughout all the neighborhood of Ebal and
Gerizim--the observed of all observers, when she appeared on the street,
or went with the maidens of Sychar to draw water from Jacob's well,
still the glory of their city. This little maiden's distinction was that
she was the first girl in that old city, who, during a period of nine
hundred years, had transcended the allotted sphere of woman in so bold a
step as that of going to school and learning to read. There had been no
special purpose in the act. She had been attracted by the mysteriou