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Made an invalid by the prejudice that deprives her of the stimulus which every human being needs and finds in the pursuit of some one especial avocation, and confines that avocation for her to a marriage which she may never effect, and which may never help the matter if she does. Made an invalid by the change from doing something to doing nothing. Made an invalid by the difference between being happy and being miserable. Made an invalid, in short, for just the reasons (in whatever manner, the manner being a secondary point) why a man would be made an invalid if subjected to the woman's life when the woman's education is over. That wretched, mistaken life, that nervous, emotive, aimless, and exhausting life which women assume at the end of their school career would have killed Dr. Clarke, had it been his lot, quite too soon for his years and experience to have matured into the writing of "Sex in Education."

Girls know what I mean. Women who work for women have some chance to read the mind of women on such points. We could produce our own note-book over against the physician's, and the contents of it would be pitiful to see.

The sense of perplexed disappointment, of baffled intelligence, of unoccupied powers, of blunted aspirations, which run through the confidences of girls "left school," is enough to create any illness which nervous wear and misery can create. And the physician should be the first man to recognize this fact, -- not the man to ignore or discredit it; not the man to use his professional culture to the neglect of any obvious appeal to his professional candor; not the man to veil within a few slippery flatteries a wilful ignorance or an unmanly sneer.

Admitting what must be in justice said of "Sex in Education," -- that its author's professional status demanded for his opinions, if expressed in the proper way and in the proper places, at least an intelligent hearing; and that he has called attention to some evils in the training of very young girls which require, whether by his means or by some other, remedy; and that he has made a sincere endeavor to point out these real and other imaginary evils in a manner good, at least in his own eyes, -- the sneer remains. (3) By it women will remember him when the work which he undertook to do shall be long forgotten. Through it the whole character of that work is vitiated and its influence marred. For it we may yet be grateful, after all.

VIII.

DR. CLARKE'S book on "Sex in Education" should be read deliberately, thoughtfully, and in a spirit of fairness, which seeks only to know the real facts in the matter, and not to find arguments for or against any special theory, system, or hobby. Dr. Clarke is an eminent physician. All forms of disease are not only familiar to him, but are forced upon his attention: of course he sees the dark side of life, and judges accordingly. His picture of the condition of women is a terrible one, calculated to excite deep anxiety in parents, and in young women themselves: he sees in the future, if the present system of education is continued, only increasing invalidism, partial development, deformity, and the eventual failure of the American race. This alarming condition of affairs he attributes to various causes; and among the most powerful of these causes he reckons the common system of continuous education for girls. He calls it the boy's method, and means by it not any special curriculum of study, or any share in out-of-doors masculine plays or employments, but simply regular study for five or six days of every week. This, he thinks, is so grave an error, so absolutely criminal a course, that he has given to the world this book of warning, to stay, if he can, this evil; to save, if he can, American 'girls, to enable them to become mothers; for, he says, "if these causes of evil -- persistent education chief among them -- should continue for the next half century, and increase in the same ratio as they have for the last fifty years, it requires no prophet to foretell that the wives who are to be mothers in our republic must be drawn from transatlantic homes. The sons of the New World will have to react, on a magnificent scale, the old story of unwived Rome and the Sabines."

It is not education for women to which Dr. Clarke objects. He repeats emphatically that they have a right to the best education and the finest culture. He does not doubt their intellectual ability; but the essential thing in a good education is complete development, so that "boys may become men, and girls women, and both have a fair chance to do and become their best." Dr. Clarke's point is that the sustained regularity of study which benefits a boy inevitably harms a girl, prevents her from doing or becoming her best, and in a frightfully large proportion of cases actually ruins her health, and makes it impossible for her to nourish, and too often impossible for her to bear, children. This danger he discusses fully, and, as he says, with great plainness of speech, and without ambiguity of language or euphemism of expression. The peril seems to him imminent, and he cries aloud from his watch-tower of science and experience, and his cry will be heard and heeded by thousands. But there are other cries to be heard and heeded; there are other watchmen who do not sleep at their posts, and who see brighter scenes and more hopeful signs, -- watchmen who do not disregard the enemy, but who see him and the causes of his strength from another point of view.