Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 66.djvu/579

Rh than the steady and peaceful study of Greek, mathematics or anything else. If the college girl insists, as she sometimes does, upon filling the time which should be devoted to study with social amusements and activities and then crams for her examinations at a late hour at night and with a feeling of intense anxiety, she is unquestionably subjecting her health to an undue strain. But this is an abuse of the higher education not its legitimate pursuit. The girl who steadily pursues her studies as the business of her life, allowing herself reasonable time for exercise and recreation, is most unlikely to be found in the sanitarium among the victims of 'nervous prosperity.' The 'prosperity' shows where these come from—from the ranks of the luxurious and indolent. The best method of preventing egotism, selfishness, and consequently introspection, is to give our boys and girls such intense interests outside of themselves that they have neither time nor inclination for morbid self-study.

I can not go into the question of men's higher education, but should like to say in regard to Dr. Smith's statement about millionaires that I am quite ready to agree that the higher education is not likely to produce them. If a man wants to be a millionaire I think he does wisely to leave school early. But one of the things to be hoped from our higher education is that it will produce in our men nobler ambitions than those of mere money-getting, and in our women the desire for husbands whose aspirations are of a widely different kind.

Our whole notion needs to have the beauty of simplicity impressed upon it. As Emerson says: 'Things are in the saddle and ride mankind.' What is the remedy? Less culture? No, more! So much that we shall see and taste the higher pleasure that comes from the intellectual and spiritual, and which is always more simple, more wholesome and less expensive than the material enjoyment which it replaces.

2em