hteen to thirty! And yet we
fathers and philosophers ask ourselves why in thunder (or even more
vehemently) our daughters have nervous prostration. Why should they?
And yet I hear Josephine ask, for the discussion is uppermost in our
thoughts at the moment:

"Do you wish Winona to become a second Miss Jacket?"

Let me explain that Miss Jacket, Miss Cora Jacket, M.D., lives opposite
to us, and has for some months been a serious menace to the happiness
of Josephine, in that my wife declares that the wretch is poisoning our
Winona's mind. The charge startled me seriously when it was broached,
but I have been trying to consider dispassionately whether the injury
likely to be worked will be greater than that consequent upon a
continuous fare of mushrooms with rich gray gravy and flirtation.
Winona and Miss Cora Jacket, M.D., are certainly thicker than thieves;
hence a pardonable lurking suspicion in Josephine's mind that the older
woman is seeking to induce the beauty of our family to study medicine.
Dr. Jacket must be thirty--just about the age of my sister-in-law. To
me she appears to be a trig, energetic little woman, rather pretty and
rather well dressed, and though she seems intelligent there is nothing
especially frigid or forbidding in her eye. Its intellectuality is not
forced upon one. I have found her so attractive that I ventured to
insinuate, by way of answer to my wife's expostulation, that Winona
might do much worse than model herself on Miss Cora Jacket, M.D. This
drew upon my head the vial of Josephine's righteous wrath.

"Now, Fred, just stop and think for one moment," she said. "I have not
a word to say against Miss Jacket. I have no doubt she is a most
worthy young woman and an excellent physician, though I should never
care to consult her myself. But that is neither here nor there. Do
you happen to know what Miss Jacket's antecedents were, and what her
life has been?"

I shook my head droopingly.

"She was born in Ohio, and was left an orphan, and practically
unprovided for, at an early age. She was helped by kind friends--all
this is from her own lips--until she was old enough to help herself by
teaching, and then, by some means or other, she came East and studied
medicine, and made the start for herself that you see. All of which, I
beg to anticipate you in saying, is marvellously to her credit. She is
plainly a brilliant and capable young woman of whom any mother might be
proud, pro