e
kept busy on other things, they will have no time for this most
dangerous brooding. Most truly does Schiller say: "_In muessiger Weile
schafft der boese Geist_," and he spares neither body nor soul.

It is always asserted that woman makes and rules society. When our women
are better educated themselves, their righteous indignation will banish
forever from all conversation in which they have a part, the fashionable
jests on subjects which do not admit of jest, and the _doubles
entendres_ whose power to excite a smile consists in their vulgar and
profane suggestions. They are as common in companies of average women as
in companies of average men, and they evidence thoughts, and are
themselves as much coarser and lower than the outspoken utterances of
Shakespeare's ideal women--whom they assume to criticise and condemn--as
the smooth and subtle rhymes of Swinburne and Joaquin Miller are below
the poetry of Chaucer and Spenser.

Closely connected with this part of my subject is that of the reading in
which girls are passively allowed to indulge. How large a proportion of
mothers and guardians exercise anything which can be called watchful
care as to what books and papers the children shall read; and yet the
booksellers' shelves groan under the weight of the most dissipating,
weakening, and insidious books that can possibly be imagined; and
newspapers which ought never to enter any decent house, lie on the
tables of many a family sitting-room. Any one who will take the trouble
to examine the records of any large circulating library, will be
astounded at the immense demand which there is for these average novels.
And in our parlors and chambers to-day, myriads of little girls are
curled up in corners, poring over such reading--stories of complicated
modern society, the very worst kind of reading for a child--stories
"whose exciting pages delight in painting the love of the sexes for each
other, and its sensual phases." And the mothers do not know what they
are reading; and the children answer, when asked what they read, "Oh,
anything that comes along."

How find a remedy for this evil? How stem this tide of insidious poison
that is sapping the strength of body and mind? How, but by educating
their taste till they shall not desire such trash, and shall only be
disgusted with it, if by chance it fall under their eyes? How, but by
giving their minds steady and regular work? If the work be intermittent,
it will, under the ge