Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 46.djvu/643

Rh just appreciation of what is appropriate and healthful in dress, deserves separate and careful consideration. It is only possible here to outline those powers for the good of humanity, and of womankind especially, which have always belonged to the mother, and to emphasize the necessity for her use of them just now, when there seems to be a call which she is peculiarly fitted to answer.

Following upon a fine physical development, which is the first object to be obtained, we may expect a truer and more natural expression of tastes and tendencies, and just in that expression we must look for our guide posts and follow to some extent certainly, in the education of our daughters, the roads toward which they point. To repress all evil inclinations, whether inherited or acquired, is an accepted duty to both sons and daughters; but the careful study of capabilities, the consideration and cultivation of special talents, are privileges accorded, as a rule, only to our sons. There is no work which can not be better done with education and special cultivation than without it; and in woman's work especially, from cooking, all through the literary and professional scale, up to motherhood, the greatest and most important work of all, there is necessity for the high development—for the information, skill, discernment, and wisdom—which such advantages bring. With the possible responsibilities of the suffrage, too, either open to women as a privilege or thrust upon them as a duty—according to the individual view of the matter—the daughters of to-day have need of an education not only thorough in its details but broad in its scope. Mrs. Elaine Goodale Eastman wrote recently of a young woman who had attained "real distinction in the sciences." In writing a letter to a friend on the birth of a child, this exponent of the higher education for women uses these significant words: "Your letter brings news which never fails to thrill me. I am sure that any woman would rather hold her own child in her arms than attain to any degree of eminence in science or learning." So long as such an expression of the poet's ideal of woman can come from one who has attained "real distinction in the sciences," we need not fear the consequences of a higher intellectual development for women. The danger lies elsewhere in the derision brought upon the advancement of women by the extravagancies of some unwise enthusiasts, and in the encouragement of a spirit of antagonism between man and woman—a spirit contrary to all the laws of God, and death to the best development of mankind. This last danger was forcibly illustrated in a recent magazine article which demanded that every father should share with the mother the responsibility of the mental and physical training of his children, and entitled Modern Woman versus Modern Man—a most excellent subject, the very central thought of which proves the necessity for working together. It was well