Page:Du Faur - The Conquest of Mount Cook.djvu/207

Rh reversed. Unable to finish my training I came out of hospital a wreck, simply because the mental strain on a sensitive, highly strung nature had been too great. Many times since then I have nursed friends and relations, and I know nothing in mountaineering so trying as being solely responsible for a delirious patient, whose very life may depend on your ability to persuade him to do the thing he does not wish to; that kind of strain, unduly prolonged and attended by want of proper sleep, air, and exercise, ends in a breakdown. Mountaineering, on the contrary, daily increases one's strength and vigour.

Do what you will, modern life demands stress and strain; the biologist may regret it, but the time has passed when the great majority of women could, even if they would, lead the life of an animated jelly-fish. To live at all means to grow, and growth, mental, moral or physical, is not attained by floating with the current, but by fighting against it. The men and women who develop physically, mentally, and morally, are surely worth more to the race than those that attain maturity at twenty-one, and at that advanced age settle all life's problems, and then live in bovine placidity to a green old age.

My good friend the professor was once rash enough to admit, that for me mountaineering had been perhaps worth while. I do not know whether he referred to my physical condition, or the fact that I might count myself in the front rank of mountaineers, but to any woman interested in the subject, and doubtful of her right to indulge in the sport, I say neither lightly nor unthinkingly "Do." But "Do it sensibly." First be sure that you are sound of heart and lungs, and then work up from small beginnings to climbs of increasing difficulty, and you will gain health, strength, self-reliance, and poise which will be an advantage to you, no matter in what corner of life your lines are cast.