Women have been fighting many battles for the higher education these last few years; and they have nearly gained the day.  When at last complete victory shall perch upon their banners, let them make one more struggle, and that for the highest education, which shall include a specific training for parenthood, a subject thus far quite omitted from the curriculum.

The mistaken idea that instinct is a sufficient guide in so delicate and sacred and vital a matter, the comfortable superstition that babies bring their own directions with them,—­these fictions have existed long enough.  If a girl asks me why, since the function of parenthood is so uncertain, she should make the sacrifices necessary to such training, sacrifices entailed by this highest education of body, mind, and spirit, I can only say that it is better to be ready, even if one is not called for, than to be called for and found wanting.

CHILDREN’S PLAYS

“The plays of the age are the heart-leaves of the whole future life, for the whole man is visible in them in his finest capacities and his innermost being.”

Mr. W.W.  Newell, in his admirable book on “Children’s Games,” traces to their proper source all the familiar plays which in one form or another have been handed down from generation to generation, and are still played wherever and whenever children come together in any numbers.  The result of his sympathetic and scholarly investigations is most interesting to the student of childhood, and as valuable philologically as historically.  In speaking of the old rounds and rhymed formulas which have preserved their vitality under the effacing hand of Time, he says,—­

“It will be obvious that many of these well-known game-rhymes were not composed by children.  They were formerly played, as in many countries they are still played, by young persons of marriageable age, or even by mature men and women....  The truth is, that in past centuries all the world, judged by our present standard, seems to have been a little childish.  The maids of honor of Queen Elizabeth’s day, if we may credit the poets, were devoted to the game of tag, with which even Diana and her nymphs were supposed to amuse themselves....

“We need not, however, go to remote times or lands for illustration which is supplied by New England country towns of a generation ago.  Dancing, under that name, was little practiced; the amusement of young people at their gatherings was “playing games.”  These games generally resulted in forfeits, to be redeemed by kissing, in every possible variety of position and method.  Many of these games were rounds; but as they were not called dances, and as man-kind pays more attention to words than things, the religious conscience of the community, which objected to dancing, took no alarm....  Such were the pleasures of young men and women from sixteen to twenty-five years of age.  Nor were the participants mere rustics; many of them could boast as good blood, as careful breeding, and as much intelligence, as any in the land.  Neither was the morality or sensitiveness of the young women of that day in any respect inferior to what it is at present.