mpt it, by discovering, in her
extensive travels, the deplorable sufferings of multitudes of young
wives and mothers, from the combined influence of _poor health_, _poor
domestics_, _and a defective domestic education_. The number of young
women whose health is crushed, ere the first few years of married life
are past, would seem incredible to one who has not investigated this
subject, and it would be vain to attempt to depict the sorrow,
discouragement, and distress experienced in most families where the wife
and mother is a perpetual invalid.

The writer became early convinced that this evil results mainly from the
fact, that young girls, especially in the more wealthy classes, _are not
trained for their profession_. In early life, they go through a course
of school training which results in great debility of constitution,
while, at the same time, their physical and domestic education is almost
wholly neglected. Thus they enter on their most arduous and sacred
duties so inexperienced and uninformed, and with so little muscular and
nervous strength, that probably there is not _one chance in ten_, that
young women of the present day, will pass through the first years of
married life without such prostration of health and spirits as makes
life a burden to themselves, and, it is to be feared, such as seriously
interrupts the confidence and happiness of married life.

The measure which, more than any other, would tend to remedy this evil,
would be to place _domestic economy_ on an equality with the other
sciences in female schools. This should be done because it _can_ be
properly and systematically taught (not _practically_, but as a
_science_), as much so as _political economy_ or _moral science_, or any
other branch of study; because it embraces knowledge, which will be
needed by young women at all times and in all places; because this
science can never be _properly_ taught until it is made a branch of
_study_; and because this method will secure a dignity and importance in
the estimation of young girls, which can never be accorded while they
perceive their teachers and parents practically attaching more value to
every other department of science than this. When young ladies are
taught the construction of their own bodies, and all the causes in
domestic life which tend to weaken the constitution; when they are
taught rightly to appreciate and learn the most convenient and
economical modes of performing all family duties