I shall have something more to say in another
place, for much is within the reach of the thoughtful, which, with
reasonable means, they can get for girls and women, and which yet they
do not get; and there are many ways in which also we can so train our
girls as to create for them constant and lasting bribes to be in the
air.

The question of education is a more difficult one to handle. In
childhood I do not see that our wise mother need be anxious; but there
comes a day when her girl is entering womanhood, when she will have to
think of it. I have dealt with this question so fully of late that I
have little here to add.[9] Our public schools are so organized that
there is small place or excuse for indulgence, although, under wise
management, this has been shown to be possible.[10] But there is a vast
and growing class which is so situated that the mother can more largely
control the studies and hours of her girls than can the parents of those
who frequent our municipal schools.

[Footnote 9: "Wear and Tear," 6th ed., 1887.]

[Footnote 10: Ibid., p. 54.]

A great change is on her child. Let her watch its evolution, and not
with such apparent watchfulness as shall suggest the perils she is to
look out for. We are all organized with a certain capital of
nerve-force, and we cannot spend it with equal recklessness in all
directions. If the girl bears well her gathering work,--that is, as one
could wish,--we may let her alone, except that the wise mother will
insist on lighter tasks and some rest of body at the time when nature is
making her largest claim upon the vital powers. The least sign of
physical failure should ring a graver alarm, and make the mother insist,
at every cost, upon absence of lessons and reasonable repose. The matter
is simple, and I have no more to say.

I am dealing now so entirely with the moral and physical aspects of a
woman's life, and so distinctly from the medical point of view, that I
do not feel called upon to discuss, in all its aspects, the mooted
question of the values and the perils of the higher education. At one
time it was not open to women at all. Now it is within her reach. Our
girl is well, and has passed, happily, over her time of development.
Will the larger education which she so often craves subject her to risks
such as are not present to the man,--risks of broken health and of its
consequences? I wish to speak with care to the mother called upon to
decide this grave quest