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No generalizations can be drawn from one case, or from seven cases, of women who have become invalids after working continuously "in a man's way." Far more numerous cases might be cited, by physicians and teachers, of girls who were seized upon by the Proteus of disease, as a retribution, let us think, for not having worked with the method of "a man's way," or for not having worked at all. Nowhere in our own country does the average woman present so feeble and diseased an aspect as in those parts of the West and South where education is of the smallest moment to her. Lacking the delicate beauty and the intellectual tastes of the New England girl, she also leads a life of greater physical suffering, and a more hopeless incapacity for usefulness. Is unremitting study a cause of the weakness of the Georgia planter's wife or the Cincinnati merchant's daughter?

Facts in the writer's possession, through an intimate acquaintance, during the first ten years of its existence, with one of our Western colleges, established for the joint education of the sexes, are somewhat significant as indicating whether, notwithstanding the many difficulties under which this infant college was obliged to struggle on, the education there given to girls was destructive or constructive. Out of twenty-seven women graduates (all that memory can recall in the absence of catalogues which might permit a full statement), nineteen have married, and eight have remained unmarried, so far as the writer knows. Out of these twenty-seven, graduating between 1857 and 1863, one only has died. All but three, whose post-graduate history has been unreported, are known to have done effective work, for a longer or shorter term of years, in educational and other departments; and a large number of them have blooming families to "rise up and call them blessed." The writer has never heard of but three cases of even temporary invalidism among these women graduates; while a large number of the male students of the same classes have died, or been prostrated by grievous maladies. One of the three cases just referred to was the indisposition for some months of a lady who has since recovered; and who has recently taken her eldest son to Germany, to pursue there her favorite study of music, to which she has consecrated, as pupil and teacher, a great part of her time for over twenty years. Another, confessedly bearing away the first honors of a class in which were graduated two of our successful Unitarian preachers, is now rearing a rosy family of boys on the shore of a Western lake, having taught most successfully for years in a high school.

Another, yet unmarried, is continuing her studies in England, where her rare powers and ripe culture are winning for her the appreciation she years ago won from that long-time friend of a wise co-education, the editor of the "Liberal Christian," who wrote of her in glowing terms from St. Louis, the former field of her work.

Another of these graduates, the mother of six remarkably fine, healthy children, is giving her husband the most efficient assistance in his work at the head of a Theological School in Eastern New York.

Here, then, is a class of facts, small, it is true, but significant as to some not unhappy results of a liberal education for women, even though obtained "in a man's way." "By their fruits ye shall know them," said another Good Physician.

"In the development of the organization is to be found the way of strength and power for both sexes," says Dr. Clarke. "Limitation or abortion of development leads to weakness and failure."

Had these women been denied the privileges of education which their natures craved so earnestly that they were willing, in some cases, to go alone to a distant State; to borrow money to defray their school expenses, so that the first-fruits of their after-work went to cancel these arrearages; to give up the attractions of life in New England, at the age when its charms are most alluring; to spend, in a new country, in privation and close study, years that might otherwise have been squandered in dissipation or wasted in futile attempts to teach at the enormous disadvantage of inadequate preparation; had these women been denied the education they struggled for and obtained in the only way then possible, who knows what hydra-headed maladies might now be racking their bodies and distracting their brains? Study, severe study, if you will, was their safeguard, not their peril, even in a physical point of view.

Dr. Clarke justly -- shall we say generously? -- concedes the right of women to the highest culture of which they are capable. But the point of his argument turns upon the method of obtaining this culture. And just here, in a man's view of the case, seems a mighty difficulty arising. But put one or two wise, motherly women on the faculty of each college where girls are admitted, (and what advocate for the liberal culture of women would think of sending girls to study where men alone preside?) and woman's wit will speedily solve the great problem of "the periodical remission from labor."