to rear them
sympathetically as they approach the difficult years. She must not be
physically worn by excessive industrial service, nor with enthusiasms
burned out by the same cause. Probably between twenty-two and
twenty-five the girl reaches the height of physical fitness. She may
also by that time have completed a liberal education, and she may even
have done that and also have put her training to useful service. It
would be better if girls completed their college courses earlier than
most do. However, since the great majority of girls do not have a
college education, the generally increased age of marriage cannot
rightfully be laid, as many seem to lay it, at the doors of the
college women. Schemes of education in the future will undoubtedly try
to remedy the defect of present systems in this respect. If most girls
could finish their training in college or professional school at
twenty, as some do now, the world would be rewarded by earlier
marriages and probably more of them. There would be more children,
reared by younger and more enthusiastic mothers. The more difficult
professions, which could not be successfully undertaken by the girl of
twenty, would then be reserved, as they generally are now, for the
women whose ambition is unusually strong and absorbing. Attempts are
frequently made to show that ambition is becoming an inordinately
prominent quality in all women, but there are few facts to support so
wide a contention.

[Illustration: Photograph by Paul Thompson
RUTH MCENERY STUART
Mrs. Stuart was one of those in whom the talent for homemaking and
the talent for creative literary work existed side by side. On her
husband's plantation in Arkansas she found many of the types for the
characters in her stories]

The girl graduate of twenty, reinforced by from two to five years of
work in the vocation she has chosen, is usually fit, physically and
mentally, for marriage. More than that, she may by that age, usually,
be trusted to know what she wants, even in a husband, if she is ever
going to know.

In the day when girls married nearly always "in their teens," wise
choice of a husband called for selection of a man considerably older
than the girl herself. This disparity is less common in these days,
and is really less desirable than it once was. The girl of the earlier
time reached maturity of mind earlier than the girl of to-day with her
prolonged education, and much earlier than the boy of her day did. H