nds declare, that they would ride fifty
miles, to see a perfectly healthy and vigorous woman, out of the
laboring classes. This, although somewhat jocose, was not an entirely
unfair picture of the true state of female health in the wealthier
classes.

There are many causes operating, which serve to perpetuate and increase
this evil. It is a well-known fact, that mental excitement tends to
weaken the physical system, unless it is counterbalanced by a
corresponding increase of exercise and fresh air. Now, the people of
this Country are under the influence of high commercial, political, and
religious stimulus, altogether greater than was ever known by any other
nation; and in all this, women are made the sympathizing companions of
the other sex. At the same time, young girls, in pursuing an education,
have ten times greater an amount of intellectual taxation demanded, than
was ever before exacted. Let any daughter, educated in our best schools
at this day, compare the course of her study with that pursued in her
mother's early life, and it will be seen that this estimate of the
increase of mental taxation probably falls below the truth. Though, in
some countries, there are small classes of females, in the higher
circles, who pursue literature and science to a far greater extent than
in any corresponding circles in this Country, yet, in no nation in the
world are the advantages of a good intellectual education enjoyed, by so
large a proportion of the females. And this education has consisted far
less of accomplishments, and far more of those solid studies which
demand the exercise of the various powers of mind, than the education
of the women of other lands.

And when American women are called to the responsibilities of domestic
life, the degree in which their minds and feelings are taxed, is
altogether greater than it is in any other nation.

No women on earth have a higher sense of their moral and religious
responsibilities, or better understand, not only what is demanded of
them, as housekeepers, but all the claims that rest upon them as wives,
mothers, and members of a social community. An American woman, who is
the mistress of a family, feels her obligations, in reference to her
influence over her husband, and a still greater responsibility in
rearing and educating her children. She feels, too, the claims which the
moral interests of her domestics have on her watchful care. In social
life, she recognises the claims