[Footnote 9:  “Wear and Tear,” 6th ed., 1887.]

[Footnote 10:  Ibid., p. 54.]

A great change is on her child.  Let her watch its evolution, and not with such apparent watchfulness as shall suggest the perils she is to look out for.  We are all organized with a certain capital of nerve-force, and we cannot spend it with equal recklessness in all directions.  If the girl bears well her gathering work,—­that is, as one could wish,—­we may let her alone, except that the wise mother will insist on lighter tasks and some rest of body at the time when nature is making her largest claim upon the vital powers.  The least sign of physical failure should ring a graver alarm, and make the mother insist, at every cost, upon absence of lessons and reasonable repose.  The matter is simple, and I have no more to say.

I am dealing now so entirely with the moral and physical aspects of a woman’s life, and so distinctly from the medical point of view, that I do not feel called upon to discuss, in all its aspects, the mooted question of the values and the perils of the higher education.  At one time it was not open to women at all.  Now it is within her reach.  Our girl is well, and has passed, happily, over her time of development.  Will the larger education which she so often craves subject her to risks such as are not present to the man,—­risks of broken health and of its consequences?  I wish to speak with care to the mother called upon to decide this grave question.  I most honestly believe that the woman is the better in mind and morals for the larger training, better if she marries, and far better and happier if it chances that she does not.  If we take the mass of girls, even of mature age, and give them the training commonly given to men, they run, I think, grave risks of being injured by it, and in larger proportion than do their brothers.  Where it seems for other reasons desirable, it should be, I think, a question of individual selection.  The majority of healthy young women ought to be able to bear the strain.  Once in a female college, the woman goes on, and it is my own experience that, on the whole, she exhibits a far larger list of disastrous results from such work than do young men.  If she be in the least degree nervous or not well, I, for one, should resolutely say no to all such claims; for let us bear in mind that the higher education is rarely to be used as men use it, to some definite end, and is therefore not, on the whole, so essential to her as to him.  Few women mean it as a way towards medicine, or even the upper ranks of teaching; and if they do, the least doubt as to health ought to make us especially unwilling to start an unseaworthy or uninsurable vessel upon an ocean of perilous possibilities.  I wish that every woman could attain to the best that men have.  I wish for her whatever in the loftiest training helps to make her as mother more capable, as wife more helpful; but I would on no account let