gress of woman is, to us of sterner mould, inconceivably rapid;
but from twenty to forty the advantages of education are upon the other
side. It then follows that a defective system of education is more
pernicious to woman than to man.

We may contemplate woman in four relations with their answering
responsibilities--as pupil, teacher, companion, and mother. As a pupil,
she is sensitive, conscientious, quick, ambitious, and possesses in a
marvellous degree, as compared with the other sex, the power of
intuition. The boy is logical, or he is nothing; but logic is not
necessary for the girl. Not that she is illogical; but she usually sees
through, without observing the steps in the process which a boy must
discern before he can comprehend the subject presented to his mind. In
the use of the eye, the ear, the voice, and in the appropriation of
whatever may be commanded without the highest exercise of the reasoning
and reflective faculties, she is incomparably superior. She accepts
moral truth without waiting for a demonstration, and she obeys the law
founded upon it without being its slave. She instinctively prefers good
manners to faulty habits; and, in the requirements of family, social,
and fashionable life, she is better educated at sixteen than her brother
is at twenty. She is an adept in one only of the vices of the
school--whispering--and in that she excels. But she does not so readily
resort to the great vice--the crime of falsehood--as do her companions
of the other sex. I call falsehood the great vice, because, if this were
unknown, tardiness, truancy, obscenity, and profanity, could not thrive.
Holmes has well said that "sin has many tools, but a lie is the handle
that will fit them all."

In many primary and district schools the habits and manners of children
are too much neglected. We associate good habits and good manners with
good morals; and, though we are deceived again and again, and
soliloquize upon the maxim that "all is not gold that glitters," we
instinctively believe, however often we are betrayed. Habits and manners
are the first evidence of character; and so much of weight do we attach
to such evidence, that we give credit and confidence to those whom in
our calmer moments we know to be unworthy. The first aim in the school
should be to build up a character that shall be truthfully indicated by
purity and refinement of manner and conversation. It does, indeed,
sometimes happen that purity of chara