As to weather, again, I should say the worse the weather the better the exercise of a brisk walk; and my wise mother shall see that her girls do not dawdle about in-doors, but get a good tramp under all skies as a part of the habits of life.  A sturdy struggle with a rough day blows the irritability and nervousness of the hour out of any but the truly sick, and I know as to some folks that the more they are out of doors the better they are morally as well as physically.

My ideal mother has looked on and seen her daughters grow up to be strong and vigorous.  When the time came, she has not forgotten that she has had and has to deal with one of her own sex.  During the years of their childhood she should understand, as concerns her girls, that to differentiate too largely their moral lessons from those of their brothers is unwise.  Something as to this I have said in a former chapter as concerns the training of invalid children.  It applies also to the well.  The boy is taught self-control, repression of emotion, not to cry when hurt.  Teach your girls these things, and you will in the end assure to them that habitual capacity to suffer moral and physical ill without exterior show of emotion, which is so true an aid to the deeper interior control which subdues emotion at its sources, or robs it of its power to harm.  Physical strength and an out-door life will make this lesson easy and natural.  Be certain that weakness of body fosters and excuses emotional non-restraint, and that under long illness the most hardy man may become as nervously foolish as a spoiled child.  Crave, then, for your girls strength and bodily power of endurance, and with this insist that the boy’s code of emotional control shall be also theirs.  But to do all this you must begin with them young, and not have to make each year undo the failure of the last.  A dog-trainer once told me that it was a good thing to whip the smallest pups with a straw, and to teach them good habits, or try to do so, from birth.  He put it strongly; but be sure that if we wish to build habits thoroughly into the mental and physical structure of childhood, we shall do well to begin early.  As regards the out-door life, I shall have something more to say in another place, for much is within the reach of the thoughtful, which, with reasonable means, they can get for girls and women, and which yet they do not get; and there are many ways in which also we can so train our girls as to create for them constant and lasting bribes to be in the air.

The question of education is a more difficult one to handle.  In childhood I do not see that our wise mother need be anxious; but there comes a day when her girl is entering womanhood, when she will have to think of it.  I have dealt with this question so fully of late that I have little here to add.[9] Our public schools are so organized that there is small place or excuse for indulgence, although, under wise management, this has been shown to be possible.[10] But there is a vast and growing class which is so situated that the mother can more largely control the studies and hours of her girls than can the parents of those who frequent our municipal schools.