health. Too much
attention cannot be given to the importance of a thorough preparation.
With it, students who were not especially strong, have gone on with
constantly improving health; without it, even the strongest have felt
that the burdens imposed by their studies were heavy--and this is true
of one sex as well as of the other.[49]

I quote also from the editorial of the college paper, which is conducted
entirely by the young men, to give the view from another stand-point,
where, in speaking of "college girls," the writer says: "They
pertinaciously keep their health and strength in a way that is
aggravating, and they persist in evincing a capability for close and
continued mental labor, which, to the ordinary estimator of woman's
brain-power, seems like pure willfulness. They have, with a generally
noticeable peculiarity, disappointed the most oracular prognostications."
The general verdict of those outside the university is, that "the
girls are holding out remarkably well."

And perhaps it may be asked, "What are our habits of life?" Possibly the
best reply may be given in the words of Hamerton, from _Intellectual
Life_, where in speaking of Kant, he says: "In his manner of living he
did not consult custom, but the needs of his individual nature." Thus is
it here. Our healthiest girls are those who have come from healthful
homes, from wise and judicious parents, who, having instilled into their
minds the true principles of right living, have not hesitated to send
them forth to the university where the experiment of co-education is
being tried, feeling that they would adapt everything to the needs of
their individual natures, and they are showing themselves to be so
doing. Sometimes sisters come together, sometimes a brother and sister,
and in a few instances the parents have come here to reside during the
college course of their children.

But the habits of the young women are generally regular. They indulge in
little party-going, or dissipation; they have work to do, and to it they
give their best strength. As a rule, they dress healthfully, are not
ashamed to show that they can take a long breath without causing
stitches to rip, or hooks to fly; they do not disdain dresses that are
too short for street-sweeping; they have learned that the shoulders are
better for sustaining the heavy skirts than the hips, and they are
finding that, especially in this climate, healthful though it is, one
must be prepared with s