366 SELECTIONS FROM ADDRESSES. 



Reference has frequently been made in addresses to our so- 

 ciety of the propriety and the utility of educating our sons for 

 farmers ; but that of our daughters has rarely been mentioned, 

 although the future condition of our posterity depends more 

 upon the physical education of our females than upon all other 

 circumstances. The employments of farmers' daughters gen- 

 erally, until within some twenty or thirty years, was well cal- 

 culated to ensure a robust constitution and a vigorous mind ; 

 but circumstances beyond our control, have laid away the 

 healthful spinning-wheel and loom into the archives of the gar- 

 ret, or some untenanted outhouse, and the dairy and house- 

 work have very generally been assigned to hired help, as by 

 our present course of education, our daughters must attend 

 school from the age of four to sixteen, eighteen, or twenty 

 years. Fifty years ago, the education of the minds of farmers' 

 daughters was almost wholly neglected, while their occupations 

 were such as to ensure bodily health and vigor. But the course 

 and object of education within a few years past has been al- 

 most entirely changed. The great object now seems to be to 

 cultivate, adorn and beautify the mind, to the utter neglect of 

 the growth and strength of their physical powers. " The one 

 ought to be done, and the other not left undone." Many of 

 the young ladies who graduate at our seminaries of learning, 

 return to their paternal homes, pale, emaciated and enfeebled 

 by constant mental exertion and neglect of physical exercise, 

 so that they are unfit for wives and mothers, and incapacitated 

 to perform the duties and enjoy the pleasures and comforts of 

 after life. 



As there is nothing appertaining to this world about which 

 parents manifest so much solicitude as the prosperity and hap- 

 piness of their descendants, — no hope or desire so strong for 

 any future earthly blessing, as that their children and children's 

 children should keep the inheritance they leave to them, and 

 live near the irgraves, may we not most devoutly hope, that the 

 physical, mental and moral education of our children and their 

 descendants, will be such as to enable them to defend their 

 rights and perpetuate the liberties of their country, and to pos- 

 sess, occupy and enjoy the lands that have been moistened 

 with the tears, the sweat, and the blood of our fathers ? 



