510 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



active body is as Tiinch theii* birthright and glory as it has always been 

 the glory of their brothers, we shall find we have gone a long way 

 toward reducing exaggerated, emotions in women. And if our first 

 antidote for this condition lies in physical activity and in the cultiva- 

 tion of a sound body, the second antidote will be found in the provis- 

 ion of constant, congenial employment for the mind. 



When a young woman went to Henry "Ward Beecher to ask hira 

 to prescribe for her disappointed affections, he promptly advised her 

 to begin the study of the higher mathematics ! There is no doubt but 

 that among the less apparent, but no less real causes of undue emotional 

 development among women we may count the lack of congenial and 

 effective work. There is nothing sanitary in intellectual idleness. 

 Physiology forbids that the inactive brain should be a healthy one. 

 The overworked individual may suffer from undue strain, but the mind 

 which is denied congenial employment suffers even a worse penalty in 

 the disability of its best powers, and the waste of purposeless energy. 



Women who are receiving the so-called higher education, find in 

 its discipline and opportunity the best remedy for any tendency to 

 excessive emotional disturbance. " The worst enemy of the emotions 

 is the intellect." There is no stronger argument for opening to women 

 new avenues for the acquisition of knowledge than these facts of her 

 constitution offer, justified as the experiment has been by those who 

 have found life a better and a broader thing to them because of these 

 opportunities. 



Undoubtedly the actual erudition that is gained in a collegiate 

 training for women could be obtained under other conditions than 

 in the four years of college life. But the inestimable value of our 

 women's colleges lies not so much in their opportunities for actual 

 learning, as in the atmos2:)here they offer. To live for four years un- 

 der a regime where mental and physical energy are carefully utilized 

 and disciplined, and where the tendency is toward the development of 

 an objective type of mind and the cultivation of a broad intellectual 

 outlook — these are incalculable benefits to woman. 



Give to our children, our growing girls, and our young women 

 occupation which, according to their age and capacity, shall develop 

 every faculty of the mind and afford genuine scope for usefulness, 

 and we shall find that the energy which might have been dissipated 

 in unproductive emotions, has been diverted into channels of effective 

 work, and conserved for high and healthful ends. 



Tde most recent measurements of skeletons indicate that the ancients •were 

 not superior to the moderns in stature, but may have been inferior. The average 

 heif,'ht3 of two lots of Romano-British skeletons ranged from four feet ten inches 

 for women to five feet two Indies for the larger men ; and the average height of 

 twenty-five mummies in the British Museum is fifty-five inches for females and 

 sixty-one inches for males. 



