our United States Geologist, whose enthusiastic devotion
to science has led to the exploring of the head-waters of the
Yellowstone, and the opening with its rich treasures of the great
Northwest--and if our representative in Congress, who voted against the
salary bill and the retroactive clause, are specimens of effeminate men,
the country can endure more of them.

If Mrs. Bradley, who years ago went to Siam, and, besides her numerous
public duties as a missionary, has found time to carry on the education
of her own children, sending back her sons, one of them, at least,
fully fitted for college, and, now that her husband has been taken from
her by death, still hopefully continues in the work--if Mrs. Cotting,
who has so recently taught all Turkey that a rich nabob cannot force
even a poor girl into an unwilling marriage; and that, in that country
of harems, a woman has rights which the government is bound to
respect--are masculine women, the world--humanity says, Give us more
such women.

We have presented these statements not because we have any desire to
enter into a controversy, but because we believe they are facts which
thinking parents and teachers will be glad to know. If they have any
bearing whatever upon this question, they go far towards proving that
women are able physically, as well as intellectually, to meet the
demands of any well-regulated college.

ADELIA A. F. JOHNSTON.

Oberlin. Ohio.

FOOTNOTES:

[53] In the classes which graduated last year there were thirty young
women; nineteen of these wholly or in part met their own expenses.

VASSAR COLLEGE.

Inquiries regarding the health of Vassar students, particularly as to
"whether it improves or degenerates under the stimulus of regular and
continued brain-work," and regarding the sanitary regulations of the
college, are inquiries of interest and importance to every one who is
thinking--and who is not--about improved methods of education for women.

The pronounced and very advanced position that Matthew Vassar, the
Founder, took, in relation to what he considered a vital necessity in
true education, the judicious combining of physical training with high
intellectual culture, and which he incorporated into his scheme for
giving "a fair chance for the girls," was, in itself, almost a challenge
to all the world to ask these questions, and to scan critically the
replies to them which the institution should make, as years should go
on, a