iety is to carry on the system of co-education. This supplies a
temperate gratification to the social appetites, induces girls to remain
longer in school, and to do more thorough work, thus securing to them
other sources of pleasure than social amusements and the companionship
of friends. The process of co-education tends to develop a well-balanced
character, and to put into it a trustworthy ballast, which American
girls cannot afford to do without. For confirmation of this, one need
only read the reports of any school judiciously managed on this plan, or
he need only use his eyes in comparing the past school days with those
of girls educated in the high schools and private schools of our Western
cities. Of course girls of the present average habits and inherited
tendencies must not be pressed up to quite the same degree of work that
may be safely required of their brothers, who have fewer domestic
demands upon their time, more out-of-door exercise, a freer style of
dress, and, in general, healthier habits of life. Many a girl who takes
especial care of herself--and, as a rule, the able girls do this--or who
has especial care from her mother, may safely do what the best boys do
without especial care.

But so long as girls require from one hour and a half to three hours a
day, to be, or to develop themselves into, the conventional girl, and
boys require only about one-third of that time to get themselves up into
the conventional pattern for a boy, girls must either be superior to
boys to begin with, or they must economize their power better, if they
are able to do as much school-work in a year as boys; that is, if girls
must consume power in all the ways that constitute the approved
specialties of girls, they cannot do the whole work of boys without
doing much more than boys do.

Whether the future has possibilities for girls that will give no
occasion for this deficit of available power for school-work, it is
impossible to say. Oberlin College and Michigan University report that
the young women are no more frequently absent from their classes on
account of ill-health than the young men. But it must be remembered that
the women are few in number, and in some important respects more above
the average of women than the young men are above the average of young
men. Especially in the respect of a prudent care for their health their
necessities have made them wise--and this will be the character of most
of the women who go t