a child's strength. The result is inevitable-a stunted, unsatisfactory womanhood, the penalty for the violating of Nature's law of slow, symmetrical development, is not to be escaped.

Dr. Clarke's Sex in Education puts this point well, and perhaps the little book may be forgiven its coarseness and bad logic, if it succeeds in awakening the consciences of parents and teachers with regard to this phase of the school question, a phase which bears with equal pertinency upon a fair chance for boys and for girls.

When women begin at eighteen or twenty the earnest business of a collegiate course, for which they have slowly and thoroughly prepared while their physical organization was maturing in happy freedom, and when they give to this higher intellectual labor the strength and enthusiasm that are at that age of all the life preeminent and most perfectly balanced, then we shall know what educated woman is, and learn her possible capacities in all that makes for the noblest humanity.

I do not undervalue what Oberlin, Antioch, Mt. Holyoke, and other schools have accomplished for woman's higher education. I would not willingly be ranked second to any in according to them the esteem and honor which their work richly merits; and among Vassar's own Alumnæ are already many who give gracious promise of what may be hoped for, nay, fulfilled, when the good seed now sowing all over this broad land shall come to glad fruition.

Meanwhile, Vassar is doing what she can to promote the health and usefulness of American women, by giving to her students the wholesome stimulus of regular, organized activity, which has for its definite aim their

preparation for the serious duties of life-duties which trained faculties carry with steady poise, growing strong under the burden, but which press with sad and crushing weight upon unaccustomed powers.

ALIDA C. AVERY.

Poughkeepsie, N. Y.

16

ANTIOCH COLLEGE.

Or the men graduates of Antioch, 13 per cent. have died; of the women graduates, 94 per cent. This of course does not include the war mortality or accidental deaths.

Three of the men are confirmed invalids. No woman graduate is such.

Of the woman graduates, three-fourths are married, and four-fifths of those were, two years ago, mothers, the families varying from one to six children. Only onehalf of the remaining fourth are graduates of longer standing than 1871.

It is proposed to make out statistics which shall show the comparative health of those women and men who have been here two years and upward, as it has been suggested that possibly only the stronger could bear the strain of the whole college course, and that the weaker ones dropped out by the way. It is perfectly safe now to assert that this is not the case.

* * * *

Yellow Springs, Ohio.

LETTER FROM A GERMAN WOMAN.

DEAR MISS BRACKETT:

FEBRUARY 6, 1874.

I gladly comply with your request to give you such information as I possess concerning the education of young girls in Germany. What I have to say is, however, more particularly applicable to the southern portions of that country.

Girls generally attend the public school from the age of six or seven to eleven, where they occupy themselves with the more elementary branches; afterwards they are placed in a seminary or " Institut," in which they remain until sixteen or eighteen. The German girl of that age, if not a member of the titled aristocracy, is seldom taught at home, except in music, and perhaps in drawing; private instruction being indeed too expensive even for the best families; neither is she sent to a boardingschool, if a moderately good day-school is at all accessible.

In my school days neither Latin nor Greek were taught, and only the elementary branches of science; from reliable sources I hear that the present curriculum is nearly the same. But in all schools the girls were thoroughly drilled in German, French, Rhetoric, Composition, Arithmetic, History, and in the History of Literature. English and Italian were optional. The hours extended from nine till twelve, and from two to four or five, no other intermission being allowed-which seemed often rather hard. One and frequently two hours were spent in needle-work, which time was utilized

in the practice of French and English conversation with an experienced teacher. The girls prepared their lessons at home, and recited sitting. Their attendance was expected to be uninterrupted, and was usually so, even through the critical period of development, except in cases of suffering and trouble, and these were not fre quent. I remember but little complaint of headache and weariness-back-ache seemed unknown. And yet these girls worked hard, many of them very hard. Some began to teach when only sixteen, or even younger, and while still pursuing their own studies. They went out generally in every weather, and at all times, month in and month out.

Now, why did they not break down? Why do we find comparatively few invalids among the educated German girls and women? Are there no other causes at work than a somewhat different climate and, occasionally, a more phlegmatic temperament; or is it because the studies of the modern languages and history, the endless practising of études and sonatas, the stooping wearily over some delicate embroidery, is less taxing to the nervous system than Latin and Greek, and the working out of algebraic problems? I am not prepared to say. But grant that a small part of the solution can be found in this difference, there are yet other and deeper causes at work. One of them is that the young German girl, while at school, makes study her sole business. She goes to no parties, visits no balls. She does not waste her hours of sleep or leisure in putting numberless ruffles on her garments, so as to surpass her mother in elegance, nor does she promenade up and down the avenues and flirt with young gentlemen. Her amusements are of the simplest. A walk, or an hour spent in a public garden in her mother's