I turn now to the mother who asks this question, and say, “What of your boys?  Why are you not concerned as to them?” “Oh, boys are never nervous.  One couldn’t stand that; but they never are.  Girls are so different.”  My answer is a long one.  I wish I could think that it might be so fresh and so attractive as to secure a hearing; but the preacher goes on, Sunday after Sunday, saying over and over the same old truths, and, like him, with some urgency within me to speak, I can only hope that I may be able so to restate certain ancient verities as to win for them a novel respect and a generous acceptation.

The strong animal is, as a rule, the least liable to damaging emotion and its consequences.  Train your girls physically, and, up to the age of adolescence, as you train your boys.  Too many mothers make haste to recognize the sexual difference.  To run, to climb, to swim, to ride, to play violent games, ought to be as natural to the girl as to the boy.  All this is fast changing for us, and for the better.  When I see young girls sweating from a good row or the tennis-field, I know that it is preventive medicine.  I wish I saw how to widen these useful habits so as to give like chances to the poor, and I trust the time will come when the mechanic and the laborer shall insist on public play-grounds as the right of his little ones.[8]

[Footnote 8:  The demagogue urges his rights to much that he cannot have in any conceivable form of society.  Let him ask for free libraries, free baths, free music, and, above all, free and ample play-grounds within easy reach.  I wonder that the rich who endow colleges do not ever think of creating play-grounds.  I wish I could open some large pockets by an appeal to hearts at large.]

The tender mother, who hates dirt and loves neatness, and does not like to hear her girls called tom-boys, may and does find it hard to cultivate this free out-door life for her girls even when easy means make the matter less difficult than it is for the caged dweller in cities during a large portion or the whole of a year.

I may leave her to see that delicacy and modesty find place enough in her educational trainings, but let her also make sure that her girls have whatever chance she can afford to live out of doors, and to use the sports which develop the muscles and give tone and vigor.  Even in our winters and in-doors, she can try to encourage active games such as shuttlecock and graces.  I know of homes where the girls put on the gloves, and stand up with their brothers, and take gallantly the harmless blows which are so valuable a training in endurance and self-control.