The Anderson intelligencer. [volume] (Anderson Court House, S.C.) 1860-1914, 1881-04-14

College Hospital, in Philadelphia, was
thronged one evening last week with
professors aud students and their lady
friends to hear the annual address to the
alumni by DR.. Hamilton Osgood, of Bos-
ton, graduate of the College. whose
subject was Tho Necessity of Radical.
Change in the Training aud Education
OF the American Giri.n s.
The greatest error, DR.. Osgood said, in
he'training Of tho American girl is that
she is allowed to become woman before
she knows it. One day she is child
the next, all unprepared, all ignorant Of
what it means, she is woman, Take
the average girl OF to-day, at the age of
nineteen, we will say. = This girl, who
would blush If obliged to confess igno-
rance of some fourth.class character of
mythology, will calmly admit that she
not only knows nothing of the physiology
OF her functions, but is perfectly indiffer-
ent about it. This is q monatrous error
-one into which our girls should by no
means be alloWedto fall. They should
be 80 trained between their twelfth and
fourteenth years as not only to be men,
tally but physically prepared for the
metamorphosis which is coming. The
American girl should know how to live
physiologically, and gradually be taught
the great and divine meanings of woman
hood. She should be impressed with
feeling OF reverence for her highest mis-
sion in life, in spite of as many womens-
rights doctrines as might fill the shelves
Of Bodleian library. The women of
to-day who are striving to put off and Ay
from the true mission of woman remind
one of the boy who, in order to rid him
self of an aching tooth, filled it with
gunpowder, put slow match to it aud
then ran: From the age of twelve to the
day OF her marriage q girl should be
made to feel her responsibility towards
her future and those whose lives will one
day be in her keeping. If the boy be
father, the girl, is in double sense
mother of the man.
A NATIONAL REQUISITE.
The supreme end of nature, Herbert
Spencer says, is the welfare of posterity.
The first requisite to success in life is to
be a good animal. The American girl
should know that to have o nation Of
good mothers is the first requisite of ma
her share in this desirable result Is to be
attained only through conscientious care
OF her body She cannot escape from
herself. She cannot change her sex.
The restles3ness so common among our
cultivated women is a mistaken and
fruitless insubordination an endeayor
to escape the duties which are the glory
and should constitute the chief 10Y of
woman.
Need tell you why change, a radi-
raj change, in the education and training
of our girls is necessarily Look at the
young women of sixteen to twenty who
pass US by hundreds as we walk the
streets. Whether they be rich or poor
what is more rare than finely formed
girl, with firm step, bright eye and ruddy
cheek? When these are lacking, what
is the reason of their absence "The
first observation of European who
comes to America" says DR.. Clarke, in
his "Sex in Education," 'is that our
women are feeble race, and, if physi-
illogical observer, he is sure to add that
they are responsible for feeble race sue
ceeding them" ~ never saw so many
pretty girls together" ssid Lady Amber
ley to DIR. Clarke, during a visit to Bos-
ton school, '.only," she added, "they all
THE DIFFERENCE.
Why should there be such radical
difference in treatment of boys and girls
i'll their early years? The boy has his
warm clothing. His feet and legs are
we'll protected. The girl is but half clad.
Half her limbs are exposed to the
weather, protected only by stockings
mono too thick, the necessary undergar-
ments, in. the majority oe cases, being
omitted. This difference .izes point of
departure for the cultivation of the great
sensitivehess of the girl. The ignorant
mother but little realizes the amount of
physical vigor it. costs an insufficiently
clad girl to keep warm. And 30, while
the boy acquires growing hardihood, IN
indifference to changes in the weather
and is ready to eat at any hour of the
day, the girl becomes delicate, shrinks
from cold, her appetite. is as. sensitive as
the Thermometer, her cheek loses its rosy
hue. THUS her life goes on, steadily in
creasing its divergence from that of the
boy. He becomes square -shouldered.
straight and sturdy; She, stopping,
round-shouldered and sentative. do
not include every girl in this picture. 1
refer, simply, to the average girl of
her original vigor, but transforms a con-
stitution as fine in every sense as the
boys into H.tangle of fretted nerves and
this is the average American girl.
But while girls are not given enough
exercise as children, they are allowed 70
have too much of kind that is not good
for them when they grow older. Take
the exceptionable case where girls are
not allowed to 60 into fashionable dissit
patton until after they leave school.
THESE girls, ali unused rs they are to the
strain OF socia: dissipation, piuugo into
a vortex of ements-dinners, par
ties, lunches, balls and theatres crowd
ing upon each other with hardly chinl
for rest. The result is that one Or two
seasons rob them of their bloom and
brightness, and not only this, but they
have exhausted the social pleasures by
nero gluttony.
SCHOOL CRAMMrNG.
One of the great errors of the day is
that girl is expected to complete her
education by. her nineteenth year-an
ago at which lads are but little more
than holf way in theirs. Everything in
the sh. 20 of culture is crowded into the
years during which the girl should be
cultivating the physical strength, COM
mon sense and practicality which are to
be of life-long benefit to her and her do.
scendants, while half the so-called cul-
ture with which fashionable education
Grams the girl is of little use and r,is
quickly forgotten. Less study and more
exercise should be the rule. Upon good
health and upon the ability to perform
e. 49, = - -