once said to me, "I tell my girls they mustn't
complain if they do have to lose a year or two by ill health, it is
hardly to be expected they should not."

Michelet treats semi-invalidism as the natural, inevitable, and charming
condition of women. A perfectly healthy woman he considers to have lost
her great charm. Science makes the astonishing discovery, that on the
whole, women average a little smaller than men, and society seems to
accept the idea that therefore, the smaller they are, the more womanly.
But before we decide upon this puny condition as the necessary state of
woman, let us look at some of the facts on the other side, and see what
are the possibilities of physical strength and health compatible with
womanhood. In the University of Michigan, pursuing her studies equally
with the young men, is a young woman from Kentucky, who measures six
feet two inches in height, and is well proportioned. She has a younger
sister there who is already five feet eight inches high, and growing
very fast. At the South, the negro women performed every kind of labor
in the field, and were said to plough better than men. In Europe all
kinds of hard work are performed by poor women; even yoked with animals
for draught. In England women are employed in stacking large bars of
iron. In Dahomey the Amazonian guards of the king perform all military
duty with equal ease and thoroughness with men. Now, if these things be
possible to women of the poorer classes, and of other countries, it
proves that it is not her essential womanhood, but her artificial life
and her inherited weakness that makes the lady of Western Europe and
America an habitual invalid.

And this muscular power, though not the only essential to health, is of
the very first importance, and, within proper bounds, is absolutely
requisite for the healthy and full development of animal life. It is
possible to carry muscular activity too far, or rather to make it
exclusive of the exercise of other powers. The gladiator of old was not
found to make the best soldier, nor did the wood-cutter bear the
fatigues of the war as well as the cultivated citizen. But as a basis
for other culture it is all-important. And it is especially needful for
woman, for the great peculiar function of maternity requires the finest
muscular power. It is the want of it, among other causes, which produces
the pains and perils of child-birth, which are almost unknown to women
of savage life. "The wo