,
and, like him, with some urgency within me to speak, I can only hope
that I may be able so to restate certain ancient verities as to win for
them a novel respect and a generous acceptation.

The strong animal is, as a rule, the least liable to damaging emotion
and its consequences. Train your girls physically, and, up to the age of
adolescence, as you train your boys. Too many mothers make haste to
recognize the sexual difference. To run, to climb, to swim, to ride, to
play violent games, ought to be as natural to the girl as to the boy.
All this is fast changing for us, and for the better. When I see young
girls sweating from a good row or the tennis-field, I know that it is
preventive medicine. I wish I saw how to widen these useful habits so as
to give like chances to the poor, and I trust the time will come when
the mechanic and the laborer shall insist on public play-grounds as the
right of his little ones.[8]

[Footnote 8: The demagogue urges his rights to much that he cannot have
in any conceivable form of society. Let him ask for free libraries, free
baths, free music, and, above all, free and ample play-grounds within
easy reach. I wonder that the rich who endow colleges do not ever think
of creating play-grounds. I wish I could open some large pockets by an
appeal to hearts at large.]

The tender mother, who hates dirt and loves neatness, and does not like
to hear her girls called tom-boys, may and does find it hard to
cultivate this free out-door life for her girls even when easy means
make the matter less difficult than it is for the caged dweller in
cities during a large portion or the whole of a year.

I may leave her to see that delicacy and modesty find place enough in
her educational trainings, but let her also make sure that her girls
have whatever chance she can afford to live out of doors, and to use the
sports which develop the muscles and give tone and vigor. Even in our
winters and in-doors, she can try to encourage active games such as
shuttlecock and graces. I know of homes where the girls put on the
gloves, and stand up with their brothers, and take gallantly the
harmless blows which are so valuable a training in endurance and
self-control.

I am reminded as I write that what I say applies and must apply chiefly
to the leisure class; but in others there is a good deal of manual work
done of necessity, and, after all, the leisure class is one which is
rapidly increasing in America, and w