But the young girl, who has finished this pleasant school life, with all
its advantages, is not as well fitted as under the old system for the
duties and trials of married life, unless under exceptional
circumstances, where the husband chosen has advanced ideas. To those
teaching the young girls of Japan to-day, the problem of how to educate
them aright is a deep one, and with each newly trained girl sent out go
many hopes, mingled with anxieties, in regard to the training she has
had as a preparation for the new life she is about to enter. The few,
the pioneers, will have to suffer for the happiness and good of the
many, for the problem of grafting the new on to the old is indeed a
difficult one, to be solved only after many experiments.

There are many difficulties which lie in the way of the new schools
that must be met, studied, and overcome. One of them is the one already
referred to, the problem of how best to combine the new and the old in
the school curriculum. That the old learning and literature, the old
politeness and sweetness of manner, must not be given up or made little
of, is evident to every right-minded student of the matter. That the
newer and broader culture, with its higher morality, its greater
development of the best powers of the mind, must play a large part in
the Japan of the future, there is not a shadow of doubt, and the women
must not be left behind in the onward movement of the nation. But how to
give to the young minds the best products of the thought of two such
distinct civilizations is a question that is as yet unanswered, and
cannot be satisfactorily settled until the effect of the new education
has begun to show itself in a generation or so of graduates from the new
schools. Another difficulty is in the matter of health. Most of the new
school-houses are fitted with seats and desks, such as are found in
American schools. Many of them are heated by stoves or furnaces. The
scholars in most cases wear the Japanese dress, which in winter is made
warm enough to be worn in rooms having no artificial heat. Put this warm
costume into an artificially heated room and the result is an
over-heating of the body, and a subsequent chill when the pupil goes,
with no extra covering, into the keen out-of-door air. From this cause
alone, arise many colds and lung troubles, which can be prevented when
more experience has shown how the costumes of the East and West can be
combined to suit the new condi