[Footnote 7: Fortnightly, 1886.]
I return to the subject. We want our young girl to be all that Romanes says she is. We desire, too, that she shall be as thoroughly educated in relation to her needs as her brothers, and that in so training her we shall not forget that my ideal young person is to marry or not, and, at all events, is to have a good deal of her life in her home with others, and should have some resources for minor or self-culture and occupation besides the larger ones which come of more distinctively intellectual acquirements.
I turn now to the mother who asks this question, and say, "What of your boys? Why are you not concerned as to them?" "Oh, boys are never nervous. One couldn't stand that; but they never are. Girls are so different." My answer is a long one. I wish I could think that it might be so fresh and so attractive as to secure a hearing; but the preacher goes on, Sunday after Sunday, saying over and over the same old truths, and, like him, with some urgency within me to speak, I can only hope that I may be able so to restate certain ancient verities as to win for them a novel respect and a generous acceptation.
The strong animal is, as a rule, the least liable to damaging emotion and its consequences. Train your girls physically, and, up to the age of adolescence, as you train your boys. Too many mothers make haste to recognize the sexual difference. To run, to climb, to swim, to ride, to play violent games, ought to be as natural to the girl as to the boy. All this is fast changing for us, and for the better. When I see young girls sweating from a good row or the tennis-field, I know that it is preventive medicine. I wish I saw how to widen these useful habits so as to give like chances to the poor, and I trust the time will come when the mechanic and the laborer shall insist on public play-grounds as the right of his little ones.[8]
[Footnote 8: The demagogue urges his rights to much that he cannot have in any conceivable form of society. Let him ask for free libraries, free baths, free music, and, above all, free and ample play-grounds within easy reach. I wonder that the rich who endow colleges do not ever think of creating play-grounds. I wish I could open some large pockets by an appeal to hearts at large.]
The tender mother, who hates dirt and loves neatness, and does not like to hear her girls called tom-boys, may and does find it hard to cultivate this free out-door life for her girls even when easy means make the matter less difficult than it is for the caged dweller in cities during a large portion or the whole of a year.
I may leave her to see that delicacy and modesty find place enough in her educational trainings, but let her also make sure that her girls have whatever chance she can afford to live out of doors, and to use the sports which develop the muscles and give tone and vigor. Even in our winters and in-doors, she can try to encourage active games such as shuttlecock and graces. I know of homes where the girls put on the gloves, and stand up with their brothers, and take gallantly the harmless blows which are so valuable a training in endurance and self-control.
I am reminded as I write that what I say applies and must apply chiefly to the leisure class; but in others there is a good deal of manual work done of necessity, and, after all, the leisure class is one which is rapidly increasing in America, and which needs, especially among its new recruits, the very kind of advice I am now giving. Severer games, such as cricket, which I see girls playing with their brothers, tennis, fencing, and even boxing, have for both sexes moral values. They teach, or some of them teach, endurance, contempt of little hurts, obedience to laws, control of temper, in a word, much that under ordinary circumstances growing girls do not get out of their gentler games. These are worth some risks, and such as they are need not trouble seriously the most careful mother. Neither need she fear for girls up to the age of puberty that they are any more liable to serious damage than are her boys.
When for her young daughters this time of change comes near, she may rest assured that their thorough physical training will have good results. Beyond this point it is hard to generalize, and, of course, the more violent games, in which girl and boy are or may be as one, must cease But each case must stand alone, and so be judged. There are plenty of healthy girls who may continue to row, to ride, to swim, to walk as before, but there are individual cases as to which advice is needed, although, as to all girls, it should be the rule that at certain times temperate exercise, lessened walks, and no dancing, riding, rowing, skating, or swimming should be allowed. Girls feel these restrictions less if they are so stringently taught from the outset as to become habits, and this is all I care to say.
Once past the critical years, and there is no reason why the mass of women should not live their own lives as men live theirs, except that always, in my opinion, the prudent woman will at certain times save herself. It is still true that even healthy women exercise too little. Our climate makes walking unpleasant, and to get in a good sweat in summer, or to wade through slush in winter, is hateful to the female soul. The English reproach us with this defect, and rightly, but do not estimate the difficulties of climate. Australian women walk little, and the English dame who comes to this country to live soon succumbs to the despotism of climate and abandons her habits of ample exercise afoot.