The physical education of girls is neglected. Their general education is effeminate rather than feminine. If a convent faculty grows bold and "modern" it hires a teacher of gymnastics, puts an "extra" on the bill of expense, and ten or twelve wealthy girls play at gymnastics if they are not too lazy. Even if the whole school is obliged to attend the club-swinging and posturing and the other nonsense, little good is done. Girls should be kept out of doors for their exercise, and fresh air is much cheaper than a gymnastic teacher. If school-girls were forced into the open air more, they would not have time for munching caramels over the erotic spasms of Araminta and Reginald in the popular novel, and there would be advantage in the change. The absence of daily, regular, and sufficient exercise renders girls listless, anaemic, sallow, foul-breathed, melancholy, stooped, irritable. Do not permit boys under eighteen years of age to go into regular training for college track-teams. Their hearts are not strong enough for the strain. Boys should not use tobacco in any form, but it is useless to try to make them believe this statement. Tobacco stunts a boy, causes dyspepsia, and renders his mind dull. The measurements made for years at Yale, Amherst, and other colleges, by physical directors, show remarkable reduction in the height and chest expansion in tobacco users as compared with boys that do not smoke. Cigarette smoking would not be different from other smoking if it did not so readily tend to excess. Cigarette smoke is inhaled more than the smoke from cigars and pipes, and thus more of the injurious ingredients of tobacco are absorbed. {210} If a boy will smoke let him use a good long-cut tobacco which has little or no Perique tobacco in it, in a "Remington," "Edison," or similar wooden pipe. These are pipes with stems of large calibre, and in the stem there is a roll of absorbent paper or pith which keeps the pipe clean. Cigars, no matter how costly they may be, are too strong for a boy and for most men. A poor cigar irritates the throat aside from the regular effect of the tobacco, especially if there is much nitre in the wrapper. Meerschaum pipes are dirty and too strong. The tongue is irritated by a pipe that has a small bore in the mouthpiece: use a mouthpiece that has as large a bore as possible. Cigar smokers should, after cutting off the end of a cigar, blow the dust out of it from the lighting end to avoid inhaling this irritating dust. AUSTIN ÓMALLEY. {211} XVII MENTAL DISEASES AND SPIRITUAL DIRECTION