5o6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



I recall a very popular series of girls' books, widely read at the 

 present time, in which the emotional natures of the little heroines are 

 continually maintained at concert pitch from the strain put upon them 

 by appeals to affection, to conscience, to inordinate love of praise, etc. 

 I have often been astonished to see intellectually promising and other- 

 wise sensible little girls devouring pages of unhealthy sentiment such 

 as would fill their robust little brothers with scorn and repugnance. 



We need only briefly refer to the unhealthy influence exerted upon 

 the minds of little girls by foolish indulgence in showy dress or in 

 social dissipation. Dissipation, indeed, is a serious term to apply to 

 the social pleasures of little children, but, when we hear of children's 

 parties beginning at nine o'clock, in which toilets and manners only 

 suitable for their mammas are encouraged, we easily conclude that, in 

 the lack of simplicity in social customs, we may find an abnormal 

 stimulus to the emotional natures of American girls. 



Certain school influences have a large responsibility in this direc- 

 tion. What is called the hot-house pressure of public schools, and the 

 elaborate system of examinations in our higher institutions of learn- 

 ing, have tbeir evil not in the exercise of the calmer faculties of the 

 mind, such as judgment, reason, memory, etc., but in their tendency 

 to arouse that complex emotion called icorry. These influences are 

 exerted, it is true, upon girls and boys alike, but, as the facility of 

 the girls for emotional disturbance is greater, they suffer more largely 

 per consequence. The repeated stimulation of such complex emotions 

 can not fail to agitate the mind of young girls, and insidiously disturb 

 its calm. 



As the girl grows to womanhood, the impression made by these 

 influences upon her plastic child nature can not be entirely thrown 

 off. If she be of a strong and womanly type, she will meet the physi- 

 cal and social trials of life with such character and self-possession as 

 she may, but they will have for such a one a double force. Life 

 offers only too many facilities for overtaxing the sympathies of the 

 unduly sensitized individual. The appeals of misery, poverty, and 

 sorrow sound in every ear. The woman who would maintain a just 

 equilibrium between sentimental mourning and efllcient sympathy for 

 these facts of existence needs to be re-enforced, not weakened, by the 

 education of her childhood. And if to the friction of any life we add 

 the strain of an elaborate social system, if our young woman be a 

 society girl, with all the demands of a high-bred life of fashion upon 

 her time, temper, versatility, and self-control, we have one more in- 

 fluence which maintains her at constantly high emotional pressure. 



It is evident that the sum of these and similar forces constantly 

 exerted upon the mind of women must have their due effect. The 

 normal result of the stimulation of any organ of the body is well 

 known to be a final loss of health in that organ. When the faculties 

 of the mind, called out in the display of the emotions, ai'e overtaxed, 



