In most seminaries, physical exercise is optional with the pupil. If arithmetic were treated in the same way, necessary as it is to civilized life, I fear but little progress would be made.
The average American girl has a delicate body, with numerous aches and weaknesses. The School which does not provide in its curriculum for this average and fundamental condition, seems to me strangely deficient in its educational provisions.
The graduate of a Woman's Seminary, should, like the graduate of a
German University, be as much improved in body as in mind.
Young women, on completing the prescribed course, should be fitted for the active duties of life. This involves, as primary and fundamental, a healthy and vigorous body.
Girls came to our school with the stipulation that they should not room above the second story, not being able to climb higher, who within five months, walked ten miles in three hours, without fatigue.
I was asked to visit a Female Seminary, some miles out of Boston, to witness the exercises of a "Commencement." Seated on the platform with the Principal, she called my attention to the graduating class. Covering her lips with a book, she whispered to me, that "that class of young ladies seated by the organ is the graduating class."
"And they have finished their education?" I asked. She nodded assent.
I gave them a good long look, and felt the wrong so deeply, that I could not resist the temptation to whisper back:
If you had said the girls themselves were finished, I should have understood you; but if you mean that their education is finished, I can only say that it seems to me they have not laid the first stone In the foundation of a true education.
Pale, thin, bent—they had been outrageously humbugged. What amount of languages and music could compensate for this outrage upon the very foundations of their being?