Suppose Mr. Durant at Wellesley, or Mr. Caldwell at Vassar, should at once introduce in their deservedly famous schools a system of physical education which should proceed on the simple but intelligent plan, first of training the weaker muscles of each pupil until they are as strong as the rest, and then of transferring the young woman thus physically improved from the class of this or that special work, to that which insures to all muscles alike ample, daily vigorous exercise. Suppose that all the girls could be made to consider this daily lesson as much a matter of course in their studies as anything else. Suppose, again, that there is a teacher familiar with the work and all its requirements, one who is capable of interesting others, one who fully enters into the spirit of it. If such a master or mistress can be found, if the pupils are instructed--whether they be sitting, standing, or walking--to always remain erect, is there any reason why the Vassar girls should not soon have as fine and impressive a carriage as the manly young fellows at the academy across the river, but a few miles distant? Looking again at the effect on the mental work, would the daily half-hour of exercise in-doors, and the hour's constitutional out-doors, in all weathers, if sensibly arranged, interfere one whit with all the intellectual progress the girls could or should make? For, is that a rational system of intellectual progress which brings out a bright intellect on a half-developed body, and promises fine things in the future, when the body has had no training adequate to justify the belief that there will be much of any future? Is not that rather a dear price to pay for such intellectuality? Hear Herbert Spencer on this point: "On women the effects of this forcing system are, if possible, even more injurious than on men. Being in a great measure debarred from those vigorous and enjoyable exercises of body by which boys mitigate the evils of excessive study, girls feel these evils in their full intensity. Hence the much smaller proportion of them who grow up well-made and healthy. In the pale, angular, flat-chested young ladies, so abundant in London drawing-rooms, we see the effect of merciless application unrelieved by youthful sports; and this physical degeneracy exhibited by them hinders their welfare far more than their many accomplishments aid it. Mammas anxious to make their daughters attractive could scarcely choose a course more fatal than this which sacrifices the body to the mind. Either they disregard the tastes of the opposite sex, or else their conception of those tastes is erroneous. Men care comparatively little for erudition in women, but very much for physical beauty and good nature and sound sense. How many conquests does the blue-stocking make through her extensive knowledge of history?"