Let me once for all admit that many girls improve in health at these colleges, and that in some of them the machinery of organization for care of the mental and physical health of their students seems to be all that is desirable.  That it does not work satisfactorily I am sure, from the many cases I have seen of women who have told me their histories of defeat and broken health.  The reason is clear.  The general feeling (shall I say prejudices?) of such groups of women is bitterly opposed to conceding the belief held by physicians, that there are in the woman’s physiological life disqualifications for such continuous labor of mind as is easy and natural to man.  The public sentiment of these great schools is against any such creed, and every girl feels called upon to sustain the general view, so that this acts as a constant goad for such as are at times unfit to use their fullest possibility of energy.  Modest girls, caught in the stern mechanism of a system, hesitate to admit reasons for lessened work or to exhibit signals of failure, and this I know to be the case.  The practical outcome of it all is that the eyes of home can never be too thoughtfully busy with those of their girls who have won consent to pursue, away from maternal care, the higher education of female colleges.  I must have wearied that wise mother by this time, but, perhaps, I have given her more than enough to make her dread these trials.

I should say something as to the home-life of girls who go through the ordinary curriculum of city day schools were it not that I have of late so very fully reconsidered and rewritten my views as to this interesting question.  I beg to refer my unsatisfied reader to a little book which, I am glad to know, has been helpful to many people in the last few years.[11]

[Footnote 11:  “Wear and Tear,” pp. 30 to 60.  J.B.  Lippincott Company, Philadelphia, 1887.]

OUT-DOOR AND CAMP-LIFE FOR WOMEN.

A good many years ago I wrote a short paper, meant to capture popular attention, under the title of “Camp Cure.”  I have reason to think that it was of use, but I have been led to regret that I did not see when it was written that what I therein urged as desirable for men was not also in a measure attainable by many women.  I wish now to correct my error of omission, and to show not only that in our climate camp-life in some shape can be readily had, but also what are its joys and what its peculiar advantages.[12] My inclination to write anew on this subject is made stronger by two illustrations which recur to my mind, and which show how valuable may be an entire out-door life, and how free from risks even for the invalid.  The lessons of the great war were not lost upon some of us, who remember the ease with which recoveries were made in tents, but single cases convince more than any statement of these large and generalized remembrances.

[Footnote 12:  “Nurse and Patient,” and “Camp Cure,” by S. Weir Mitchell.  J.B.  Lippincott Company Philadelphia.]