of health, he has carefully observed the effects of close and
continued study, not only during the course, but in subsequent life, and
he will risk his reputation for truthful statements, in saying that he
believes--that he knows--the most careful statistics would show among
the women who are college graduates, whom he has known, a higher
standard of health than among the same number of women from any class of
society--working women, fashionable women, or women of merely quiet,
domestic habits. And yet, "every well-developed, well-balanced woman who
is a graduate from our colleges has actually performed one-fourth _more_
labor than a man who has stood by her side, and she is entitled to
one-fourth more credit."

A girl should be as free to choose for herself as a boy is. She can
never truly know herself, nor be known by others, as the power in the
world, greater or less, which she was ordained by God to be, until these
thousand restrictions that limit and dwarf her intellectual life are
removed.

"Let her make herself her own
To give or keep, to live, and learn, and be
All that not harms distinctive womanhood."

I have recently been assured by one of the best students that have ever
graduated from our University, and by another who graduated from
Hillsdale College in this State, from precisely the same course as the
gentlemen students, that to girls of average capacity, the college
course, all that is required of the young men--and all that _they_ are
accustomed to perform--is not by any means difficult, and will not
over-tax any girl of average health and abilities, who is properly
prepared when she enters. But the trouble is that while girls like the
studies in the regular course, and study with a real relish, they want
more. They are not satisfied with the French and German of a course,
they want to speak and write these languages, and add extra private
lessons to those of the regular classes. The few lessons of the course
in perspective drawing have, in some, awakened an artistic taste, and
they want to pursue drawing farther. There are better teachers to be
found in the vicinity of a University than they will find at home, and
they are constantly tempted to do too much. A number of girls in the
literary course of the University attend the medical lectures in certain
departments, some teach students who are "conditioned" in certain
branches. From all the colleges, the report in this respect i