foolish whims and prudish nonsense that enslave little minds. Woman is now bound hand and foot by custom and law. She is only a thing. She is not a conscious independent personality. She is not recognized as a self-directing, responsible agent. She plays a second part. She is shut out from all the higher aims and opportunities of life. Into no college is she permitted to enter if she would cultivate her mind in the highest walks of science and literature. At the feet of no learned professor may she sit for wisdom. Every profession but the teacher's is barred against her, and in that her services are considered not half at par. She can not get more than half-pay for her labor. In law she is but a ninny; if she is married she is less still, an absolute nonentity; her legal existence is merged in that of her husband--the two become one, and he is that one. Then in the every-day customs of life she is but a child. She is not independent, free, energetic. The sun must not shine upon her; she must not breathe the free air, nor bathe her limbs in the clear stream, nor exercise in a healthful and profitable way. She must not go away from her home without a protector; she must not step into the street after nightfall without a watch; she must trail her dress in the mud if others do; hang her bonnet behind her head if it is the fashion; wear a bodiced waist tight as a vice if the milliner says so, and do and submit to a thousand other things equally absurd and wrong. This is her present position. To rise above this position and be what she is capable of being, be strong in mind and purpose, be resolute in the right, be herself untrammeled by custom or law, so far as any being can be in a good society, it requires the culture of energy in the Girlhood of this age. What was once regarded as a sufficient character for a woman, is not enough now. Women are advancing as well as science, mechanics, and men. Young women should remember this. Once it was thought education enough if a woman could read and write a little. Now, she must know a number of things more. The time is not far distant when she must be educated as well as man. So it is in relation to character. Very soon woman must possess energy, self-reliance, force of will and thought, as well as love, or she will be wanting in the essential elements of a noble womanhood. The woman and wife will be quite different at the commencement of the next century from what they were at the commencement of the last. Do the girls understand this? It must be so. The edict has gone out and can not be withdrawn. Woman hails it with joy. She wishes to improve with the advancing age. She would feel sad and look antiquated if the car of progress left her behind. If a few women of this age could be mesmerized and kept in the magnetic state five hundred years, and then unlocked from the somnambulic fetters, how would they compare with the women of that future age? They would be