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Mrs. Badger has already shown that the health of Southern and Western women, whose opportunities of education have been small, is even lower than that of our cultivated classes, a matter easily to be tested by any one who will watch the crowd pouring out of a western railroad station. "The cerebral processes by which knowledge is acquired are the same for both sexes," says Dr. Clarke but observing women will hardly admit this statement. I believe it would be hardly possible for women to become students if the processes were identical. The slowest woman who has any real power will conquer a new study in about half the time of the average male student. Her method she does not herself understand. She has ways and means which are not apparent. I cannot believe that any "Oriental care of the body" ever equalled the care given to the women of to-day in America. The women who are now practising as physicians in the harems of Europe and Asia find fearful ignorance and absolute superstition. For myself I can only say that I look for young women of the strongest physique at this moment within the walls of academies and colleges. The regular studies, the early rising and retiring, the exercises in the gymnasium and the open air, the companionship with charming and cultivated women older than themselves, all tend to the most perfect health. This is a reproach to our homes, and perhaps indicates that carelessness in mothers which was always avoided when I was young, not so much because its results were injurious as because it was in itself unwomanly and indelicate.

Dr. Clarke fears that co-education will stimulate women to attempt what the method of their physical life renders dangerous. Why, then, does he turn from Oberlin, Antioch, and Cornell to the one institution where co-education has never been, and will never be, attempted, and where the one fact of the resident physician and the resident "lady principal" should indicate to the most careless inspection a careful adaptation to womanly needs? Or why, if he had an hysterical patient who happened to have been a pupil at Vassar, did he trust, without examination, to her statements? I may challenge an audience when I speak of Vassar; for it is against my will if it fulfil any dream of mine. From the hour that it first went into operation I have been its frequent visitor. The president and faculty might have banished me as a spy, so thoroughly committed am I to the cause of co-education. Instead they welcomed me warmly, and gave me liberty and opportunity to detect every flaw.

In a meeting of the "American Association for the Promotion of Social Science," held last May, I drew attention to the superior health of the girls at Vassar. I pointed out the fact that the health of the girls continued to improve up to the hour of graduation; and while I had in my audience three members of the faculty, Miss Maria Mitchell, the resident physician, Dr. Avery, and President Raymond himself, it was observable that they heard me with indifference rather than pride, so perfectly familiar were they with the fact. The parents of all the pupils are also familiar with it; and if Dr. Avery were at any moment to resign her responsible post she would receive a warm welcome in any community that had sent pupils to Vassar. The world may be challenged to produce, in any one neighborhood, four hundred young women of so great physical promise. In the following June I met Miss Mary Carpenter at Vassar by appointment. She saw with amazement how close the actual attainment of the pupils came to the curriculum proposed; but she concluded her investigation by ejaculating, with the peculiar emphasis that all who know her will recall, "And we must admit that they have superior health, it is most extraordinary "This was the testimony of one accustomed to the "rosebuds "in England's "garden of girls." In regard to the case reported by Dr. Clarke in connection with Vassar College, I was so sure that there was some mistake that I wrote at once to the resident physician, and she will be glad to be held responsible for the following statements.

The points will be perceived if the reader will refer to the 79th page of "Sex in Education." Vassar College does not receive students under fifteen, even for the first preparatory year; and there is a preparatory course of two years. No student ever entered the freshman class at fourteen. At the beginning of every collegiate year the students are carefully instructed regarding the periodic precautions necessary to their health: They are positively forbidden to take gymnastics at all during the first two days of their period; and, if there is the slightest diseased tendency, are told to forego those exercises entirely. They are forbidden to ride on horseback, and are strongly advised not to dance, nor to run up and down stairs, nor to do any thing else which will give successive, even though gentle, shocks to the trunk. They are encouraged to go out of doors for quiet walks and drives, and to do whatever they can to steady irritable nerves or unnatural excitement. That a student should faint again and again in the gymnasium, and still be allowed to continue her exercises there, is a statement that would not be made by any one familiar with the personal physical care given at Vassar College, not merely by the resident physician, but by the teachers acting as a body. It is a statement that will be believed by no one in the least familiar with the college methods. The faculty do not attempt to cut down the work of each girl periodically; but they do mean to so regulate the work of the whole time that the end of no day shall find her overtaxed, even though that day bear an unusual burden. The average age of the graduates is twenty-one and one- half. The present freshman class numbers seventy-nine.