FEMALE EDUCATION. 321 



hereditary in the family of a third, that one has been nervous, another 

 had convulsions when a baby, another has been threatened with water 

 in the head, etc. His own education and training have not taught 

 him to notice or know the meaning of narrow chests, or great thin- 

 ness, or stooping shoulders, or very big heads, or quick, jerky move- 

 ments, or dilated pupils, or want of appetite, or headaches, or irrita- 

 bility, or back-aches, or disinclination to bodily exertion. But all these 

 things exist in abundance in every big school, and the girls handi- 

 capped in that way are set into competition with those who are strong 

 and free from risks. It is the most nervous, excitable, and highly 

 strung girls who throw themselves into the school competition most 

 keenly. And they, of course, are just the most liable to be injured by 

 it. All good observers say the intensity of feeling displayed in girls' 

 competitions is greater than among lads, and that there is far more 

 apt to arise a personal animus. Girls don't take a beating so quietly 

 as boys. Their moral constitution, while in some ways stronger than 

 that of boys, especially at that age, suffers more from any disturbing 

 cause. The whole thing takes greater hold of them — is more real. It 

 is more boys' nature to fight and forget, and take defeat calmly. 

 Girls, I believe, suffer, when the competition in schools is too keen, in 

 their tenderness of feeling and in their charity. They tend to attrib- 

 ute unfairness of motive to their teachers far more than boys, just 

 because their affective nature is and should be stronger than their rea- 

 soning power. A man's idea of the perfection of feminine nature is, 

 that it always has some self-denial and much generosity in it. Now, 

 these keen school competitions admit in theory of no such notions of 

 self-denial or generosity, though both are common enough in individ- 

 ual cases. An ideal woman should rejoice as much in sympathy with 

 the winner of the first place as if she had won it herself. Men cer- 

 tainly don't, in their hearts, like to see girls competing keenly with 

 each other for anything. 



Young women at adolescence are apt to have in large degree the 

 feminine power of taking it out of themselves for a time, more than 

 they are able to bear for long. It is this power which enables a mother 

 to watch a sick child for weeks without almost any sleep, and without 

 feeling much sense of fatigue at the time. Now, when this power is 

 called up for months for such a purpose as school competition — the 

 feelings being stimulated by rivalry with others, and by the enthusi- 

 asm of that age, during a period of life when the body is undeveloped, 

 and should be rapidly growing, and all these functions and faculties 

 maturing — it is perverted from the real use that Nature meant it for, 

 and the results can not fail to be bad. At that age girls are not only 

 enthusiastic in perception and reception, but they are often very con"- 

 scientious, and apply their ideas of right and wrong to things that 

 have no ethical relationship. They are, in fact, hyper-conscientious-, 

 and make themselves unhappy about school deficiencies, for which. 

 VOL. xxiv. — 21 



