This is the most momentous health-problem with which we have to deal,—­ to secure the proper physical advantages of civilization for American women.  Without this there can be no lasting progress.  The Sandwich Island proverb says,—­

  “If strong be the frame of the mother,
  Her son shall make laws for the people.”

But in this country, it is scarcely an exaggeration to say that every man grows to maturity surrounded by a circle of invalid female relatives, that he later finds himself the husband of an invalid wife and the parent of invalid daughters, and that he comes at last to regard invalidism, as Michelet coolly declares, the normal condition of that sex,—­as if the Almighty did not know how to create a woman.  This, of course, spreads a gloom over life.  When I look at the morning throng of schoolgirls in summer, hurrying through every street, with fresh, young faces, and vesture of lilies, duly curled and straw-hatted and booted, and turned off as patterns of perfection by proud mammas,—­it is not sad to me to think that all this young beauty must one day fade and die, for there are spheres of life beyond this earth, I know, and the soul is good to endure through more than one;—­the sadness is in the unnatural nearness of the decay, to foresee the living death of disease that is waiting close at hand for so many, to know how terrible a proportion of those fair children are walking unconsciously into a weary, wretched, powerless, joyless, useless maturity.  Among the myriad triumphs of advancing civilization, there seems but one formidable danger, and that is here.

It cannot be doubted, however, that the peril will pass by, with advancing knowledge.  In proportion to our national recklessness of danger is the promptness with which remedial measures are adopted, when they at last become indispensable.  In the mean time, we must look for proofs of the physical resources of woman into foreign and even into savage lands.  When an American mother tells me with pride, as occasionally happens, that her daughter can walk two miles and back without great fatigue, the very boast seems a tragedy; but when one reads that Oberea, queen of the Sandwich Islands, lifted Captain Wallis over a marsh as easily as if he had been a little child, there is a slight sense of consolation.  Brunhilde, in the “Nibelungen,” binds her offending lover with her girdle and slings him up to the wall.  Cymburga, wife of Duke Ernest of Lithuania, could crack nuts between her fingers, and drive nails into a wall with her thumb;—­whether she ever got her husband under it is not recorded.  Let me preserve from oblivion the renown of my Lady Butterfield, who, about the year 1700, at Wanstead, in Essex, (England,) thus advertised:—­“This is to give notice to my honored masters and ladies and loving friends, that my Lady Butterfield gives a challenge to ride a horse, or leap a horse, or run afoot, or hollo, with any woman in England