Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 16.djvu/555

Rh world would, we believe, for the preceding reasons, be a most injurious doctrine, and lead to disastrous results. Our text, the pupil teacher, is an example. A young girl, between the ages of fourteen and twenty-one, the most anxious and important period in her whole life, when her mental and physical constitution is undergoing development, is put under a severe intellectual strain. She is irritated and worried all day by teaching children, she is fatigued by hard study, and is rendered constantly anxious by the frequently recurring examinations on which her reputation, and it may be her living, depends. Such a career does not as a rule break down the young man, but in a large number of cases it completely unhinges the woman. She, in fact, is compelled to perform the work of a man without having his organic basis to depend on, and hence, as a consequence, her entire system suffers. So it is with women who follow other pursuits requiring severe mental application; they age before their time, and finally succumb. It is true that men occasionally give way under the same ordeal, but these are comparatively the exception, and this is as often brought about by the assistance of other circumstances as by work alone. It is also a fact that there are some women who, overcoming all difficulties, have fully acquitted themselves of the highest mental exertions without injury, thus proving themselves to be of masculine capacity. Whether for these the Church, the bar, and physic are to throw open their arms, I leave for others to decide; but that the majority of the sex would be benefited by a systematic encouragement to follow learned professions and other laborious callings, would be, we think, physiologically and practically an error.

How unmarried women who require to earn their living are to do so by the exercise of their intellectual faculties, is one of the great problems of the day, and by far too extensive a subject to discuss at present. Our aim has been to point out that in controversies on the question the medical aspect of the case is frequently lost sight of, and it is forgotten that, in the competition for life, woman is the weaker vessel, and liable to be broken when too roughly handled. Sage philosophers may speculate what ages may effect by evolution, but, taking woman as we find her, we believe that her welfare is to be consulted, not by encouraging her to take an independent position in life and by fostering a contempt for marriage, which is now the professed tendency of the strong-minded young lady, but by educating her in such a judicious and sensible manner as will make her a good wife, mother, and useful member of society, which is unfortunately not the inclination of the present age. If this were more systematically carried out, there would be fewer single women under the necessity of working for their own living; the outcry in behalf of those unappropriated blessings would be modified, and on entering the marriage state, which is the happiest as well as the healthiest condition, they would place