en large numbers of girls--and picked
girls--shall devote themselves to the strain of preparing for various
examinations, upon which much depends. Worry combines to work its
effects with those of excessive mental application, excessive use of the
eyes at short distances, and defective open-air amusement. The whole
examination system is of course to be condemned, but most especially
when its details are so devised as to press thus hardly upon girlhood at
this critical and most to be protected period. Many years ago Herbert
Spencer protested that we must acquaint ourselves with the laws of life,
since these underlie all the activities of living beings. The time is
now at hand when we shall discover that education is a problem in
applied biology, and that the so-called educator, whether he works
destruction from some Board of Education or elsewhere, who knows and
cares nothing about the laws of the life of the being with whom he
deals, is simply an ignorant and dangerous quack.

What has been said about the reaction against excess in the physical
education of girls applies very forcibly to excess in their mental
education. We are undoubtedly coming upon a period when more and more
will be heard of the injurious consequences of such ill-timed
preparation for stupid examinations as has been referred to; and there
will be not a few to sigh for the return to the bad old days which a
certain type of mind always calls good. Here, again, we must find the
golden mean, recognizing that the danger lies in excess, and especially
in ill-timed excess. We shall further discover that if we desire a girl
to become a woman, and not an indescribable, we must provide for her a
kind of higher education which shall take into account the object at
which we aim. It will be found that there are womanly concerns, of
profound importance to a girl and therefore to an empire, which demand
no less of the highest mental and moral qualities than any of the
subjects in a man's curriculum, and the pursuit of which in reason does
not compromise womanhood, but only ratifies and empowers it.

_Muscles worth Developing._--When men and women are carefully compared,
it is found that women, muscularly weaker as a whole, are most notably
so as regards the arms, the muscles of respiration, and the muscles of
the back. The muscles of the legs, and especially of the thighs, are
relatively stronger. In these facts we can find some practical guidance.
The muscles of