tions. Another part of the health problem
lies in the fact that in many cases the parents do not understand the
proper care of a growing girl, ambitious to excel in her studies.
Instead of the regular hours, healthful food, and gentle restraint that
a girl needs under those circumstances, our little Japanese maiden is
allowed to sit up to any hour of the night, or arise at any hour in the
morning, to prepare her lessons, is given food of most indigestible
quality at all hours of the day between her regular meals, and is
frequently urged to greater mental exertion than her delicate body can
endure.

Another difficulty, in fitting the new school system into the customs
of the people, lies in the early age at which marriages are contracted.
Before the girl has finished her school course, her parents begin to
wonder whether there is not danger of her being left on their hands
altogether, if they do not hand her over to the first eligible young man
who presents himself. Sometimes the girl makes a brave fight, and
remains in school until her course is finished; more often she succumbs
and is married off, bids a weeping farewell to her teachers and
schoolmates, and leaves the school, to become a wife at sixteen, a
mother at eighteen, and an old woman at thirty. In some cases, the
breaking down of a girl's health may be traced to threats on the part of
her parents that, if she does not take a certain rank in her studies,
she will be taken from school and married off.[*55]

These are difficulties that may be overcome when a generation has been
educated who can, as parents, avoid the mistakes that now endanger the
health of a Japanese school-girl. In the mean time, boarding schools,
that can attend to matters of health and hygiene among the girls,
would, if they could be conducted with the proper admixture of Eastern
and Western learning and manners, do a great deal toward educating that
generation. The missionary schools do much in this direction, but the
criticism of the Japanese upon the manners of the girls educated in
missionary schools is universally severe. To a foreigner who has lived
almost entirely among Japanese ladies of pure Japanese education, the
manners of the girls in these schools seem brusque and awkward; and
though they are many of them noble women and doing noble work, there is
room for hope that in the future of Japan the charm of manner which is
the distinguishing feature of the Japanese woman will not be