ult? Let me read you the words of a high authority--Dr
Richardson: `These precocious, coached-up children are never well,' he
says. `Their mental excitement keeps up a flush which, like the
excitement caused by strong drink in older children, looks like health,
but has no relation to it.' And if this overtasking the mind is so
injurious to the body, what will our women of the next generation be if
things go on with us as they are doing at present? I must just quote
again from the same authority. Dr Richardson says, `If women succeed
in their clamour for admission into the universities, and like moths
follow their sterner mates into the midnight candle of learning, the
case will be bad indeed for succeeding generations; and the geniuses and
leaders of the nation will henceforth be derived from those simple
pupils of the Board schools who entered into the conflict of life with
reading, writing, and arithmetic, free of brain to acquire learning of
every kind in the full powers of developed manhood.'"

"You make out a very gloomy case and prospect for us," said Mrs Prosser
sadly and thoughtfully.

"I do," replied the other; "and what makes all this far worse is, that
this mental overwork cannot go on without depriving the sufferers--for
they _are_ sufferers to an extent they little dream of--of that sweet
privilege of being a true blessing to others which Christian mothers,
daughters, and sisters enjoy, whose work inside, and moderately outside
the home, is done simply, unostentatiously, and in a womanly manner.
Verily, those women who sacrifice all to this mental forcing, to this
race for intellectual distinction,--verily, they have their reward. But
they can look for no other."

"But stay, my dear friend," interposed Dr Prosser. "I have been going
with you heart and soul, only I felt a little jolt just then, as if the
wheels ran over a stone. Was not that last expression a little
uncharitable? Will all women who covet and strive after intellectual
honours be necessarily shut out of heaven?"

"Far be it from me to say so," exclaimed Miss Maltby earnestly; "I was
speaking about reward. Surely we make some sad mistakes on this
subject; I mean about reward in a better world. We are naturally so
afraid, some of us, of putting good works in the wrong place, that we
have gone into the opposite extreme, and turned them out of their right
place. It is surely one of the sweetest and most encouraging of
thoughts that