HIGHER EDUCATION OF WOMEN. 469 



dinate pursuit of pleasure during the ten years which elapse between 

 their leaving school and their marriage. This includes late hours, 

 turning night into day, insufficient sleep, improper diet, improper 

 clothing and want of exercise. The writer claims that most of the 

 generally admitted poor health of women is due to over education, 

 which first deprives them of sunlight and fresh air for the greater part 

 of their time; second, takes every drop of blood away to the brain 

 from the growing organs of generation; third, develops their nervous 

 system at the expense of all their other systems, muscular, digestive, 

 generative, etc.; fourth, leads them to live an abnormal single life 

 until the age of twenty-six or twenty-seven instead of being married 

 at eighteen, which is the latest that nature meant them to remain 

 single; fifth, raises their requirements so high that they can not marry 

 a young man in good health. 



There is another aspect of the question, which is not often dis- 

 cussed, but which has an important bearing upon it. The very essence 

 of cultivation of intellect to its highest point consists in raising the 

 standard of one's requirements. A contented mind makes a man 

 happy. Does a high education make one's mind contented, or does 

 it make it discontented with the present, and ever struggle towards 

 a higher ideal in the future? Is the woman who is versed in art 

 and literature contented with a simple home, or must she be surrounded 

 with objects of art and more or less costly books; and, if so, is she 

 satisfied with her lot when she marries an average man, who is able 

 to provide for her all the necessaries of life, but is not possessed of 

 sufficient wealth to provide those things which would be useless 

 luxuries to a woman of ordinary education, but which are necessities 

 for her? Not only must the highly educated woman have an artistic 

 home, large enough to hold her artistic and literary collections, and 

 roomy enough in which to entertain her artistic friends, but she must 

 have a certain number of expensive and highly trained assistants, to 

 keep these large collections in proper order. In plain language, she 

 must have servants to clean them and move them about without de- 

 stroying them. Can such a woman, anxious and worried over the 

 care of several thousands or hundreds of objects of art, devote the 

 same care to the bearing and bringing up of her family as the woman 

 whose ordinary education has made her feel no need of possessing 

 such objects, but who, on the contrary, is content with a home and 

 furniture which she herself is oftentimes alone capable of taking care 

 of? 



We all want to be happy, and to that end we all want to be good ; 

 and, I have already said, we want our children, especially our boys, 

 to be good and happy. But those who know anything about virtue 

 in the male know that the marriage of our young men under twenty- 



