ee, is the temporary effect of the very clever feint of Dr.
Clarke--nothing else can it be called. The book gives us the impression
that the author is going to attack our effort to produce the kind of
women upon which any shrewd observer must see that our unparalleled
prosperity to a great degree rests. It makes us believe he is going to
attack the very method to which our success in educating women is due;
and it makes us fear that he is going to attack the modern doubt
concerning the old theory, that "the highest and ultimate aim of a woman
is to be the satisfactory wife of one man, and the nourishing mother of
another;" but he does not even try to do any one of these things. He has
thrown a calcium light upon one spot, revealing some defects, and many
eyes are for a time drawn towards it. His feint has created a sensation,
and brought an important subject up to a grade of familiarity and
openness where it can be talked of and examined, and I closed the book
with a great sense of obligation on behalf of my nation.

I have long felt that physicians, themselves, have no adequate
impression of the danger we are incurring in the average neglect that
attends the physical rearing of American girls, and subsequent care of
young women, nor adequate knowledge of their tendency to weakness in
their present condition. Mothers are busy, and girls are left too much
to take care of themselves.

From considerable personal knowledge, I am aware that the present state
of things ought to occasion anxiety; that girls, ignorant of the
consequences, are disposed to conceal any weakness or unnatural
condition, through their great aversion to medical attendance, and from
a dislike to restrictions upon their social pleasures; and also from the
fear that these restrictions would produce suspicion among their friends
in regard to their condition. I am sure that I am stating facts that are
not appreciated in the degree that they deserve.

Looked at physically, and with a philanthropy that extends beyond our
contemporaries, English women do not allow us to feel wholly satisfied
with our American women. They make us feel that there is a debit as well
as a credit column when we compare our system of social life with
theirs. But we must not be so unwise as to attribute the fault to four
or five years in the American girl's life; nor must we be so
short-sighted as to limit the responsibility to the present generation.
Our own grandmothers did thus