which I have mentioned; such, for instance, as poor ventilation, overheating of the school-room, draughts of cold air, and the like; not to speak of the annual public exhibition, with the possible nervous excitement attending it.  All of these things are mentioned, not because they belong directly to the question of overwork, but because it is well, in considering the question, to keep in mind all possible causes of ill health, that no one cause may be unduly emphasized."[1]

[Footnote 1:  Forty-ninth Annual Report of the Massachusetts Board of Education, p. 204 (John T. Prince).]

In private schools the same kind of thing goes on, with the addition of foreign languages, and under the dull spur of discipline, without the aid of any such necessities as stimulate the pupils of what we are pleased to call a normal (!) school.

In private schools for girls of what I may call the leisure class of society overwork is of course much more rare than in our normal schools for girls, but the precocious claims of social life and the indifference of parents as to hours and systematic living needlessly add to the ever-present difficulties of the school-teacher, whose control ceases when the pupil passes out of her house.

As to the school in which both sexes are educated together a word may be said.  Surely no system can be worse than that which complicates a difficult problem by taking two sets of beings of different gifts, and of unlike physiological needs and construction, and forcing them into the same educational mould.

It is a wrong for both sexes.  Not much unlike the boy in childhood, there comes a time when in the rapid evolution of puberty the girl becomes for a while more than the equal of the lad, and, owing to her conscientiousness, his moral superior, but at this era of her life she is weighted by periodical disabilities which become needlessly hard to consider in a school meant to be both home and school for both sexes.  Finally, there comes a time when the matured man certainly surpasses the woman in persistent energy and capacity for unbroken brain-work.  If then she matches herself against him, it will be, with some exceptions, at bitter cost.

It is sad to think that the demands of civilized life are making this contest almost unavoidable.  Even if we admit equality of intellect, the struggle with man is cruelly unequal and is to be avoided whenever it is possible.

The colleges for women, such as Vassar, are nowadays more careful than they were.  Indeed, their machinery for guarding health while education of a high class goes on is admirable.  What they still lack is a correct public feeling.  The standard for health and endurance is too much that which would be normal for young men, and the sentiment of these groups of women is silently opposed to admitting that the feminine life has necessities which do not cumber that of man.  Thus the unwritten code remains in a measure hostile to the accepted laws which are supposed to rule.