ct. The regimen of a college arranged for
boys, if imposed on girls, would foster it still more.

The scope of this paper does not permit the discussion of these other
causes of female weaknesses. Its object is to call attention to the
errors of physical training that have crept into, and twined
themselves about, our ways of educating girls, both in public and
private schools, and which now threaten to attain a larger
development, and inflict a consequently greater injury, by their
introduction into colleges and large seminaries of learning, that have
adopted, or are preparing to adopt, the co-education of the sexes.
Even if there were space to do so, it would not be necessary to
discuss here the other causes alluded to. They are receiving the
amplest attention elsewhere. The gifted authoress of "The Gates Ajar"
has blown her trumpet with no uncertain sound, in explanation and
advocacy of a new-clothes philosophy, which her sisters will do well
to heed rather than to ridicule. It would be a blessing to the race,
if some inspired prophet of clothes would appear, who should teach
the coming woman how, in pharmaceutical phrase, to fit, put on, wear,
and take off her dress,--

"Cito, Tuto, et Jucunde."

Corsets that embrace the waist with a grip that tightens respiration
into pain, and skirts that weight the hips with heavier than maternal
burdens, have often caused grievous maladies, and imposed a needless
invalidism. Yet, recognizing all this, it must not be forgotten that
breeches do not make a man, nor the want of them unmake a woman.

Let the statement be emphasized and reiterated until it is heeded,
that woman's neglect of her own organization, though not the sole
explanation and cause of her many weaknesses, more than any single
cause, adds to their number, and intensifies their power. It limits
and lowers her action very much, as man is limited and degraded by
dissipation. The saddest part of it all is, that this neglect of
herself in girlhood, when her organization is ductile and impressible,
breeds the germs of diseases that in later life yield torturing or
fatal maladies. Every physician's note-book affords copious
illustrations of these statements. The number of them which the writer
has seen prompted this imperfect essay upon a subject in which the
public has a most vital interest, and with regard to which it acts
with the courage of ignorance.

Two considerations deserve to be mentioned in this conne