The invalidism of young girls is usually attributed to every cause but the right one; to hard study--co-education--which, it is said, compels overwork that the girl student may keep up with the young men of her class; too much exercise, or lack of rest and quiet at certain periods when nature demands it. All the while the physician is silent concerning the glove-fitting, steel-clasped corset, the heavy, dragging skirts, the bands engirding the body, the pinching, deforming boot, and the ruinous social dissipation of fashionable society. These will account for much of the feebleness of young women and girls. For they exhaust nervous force, make freedom of movement a painful impossibility, and frequently shipwreck the young girl before she is out of port. We have a theory, generally accepted in civilized society, which we never formulate in speech but to which we are very loyal in practical life. This theory, put in plain language, is as follows: God knows how to make boys; and, when He sends a boy into the world, it is safe to allow him to grow to manhood as God made him. He may be too tall or too short, for our notions, too stout or too thin, too light or too dark. Nevertheless, it is right, for God knows how to make boys. But when God sends a girl into the world, it is not safe to allow her to grow to womanhood as He has made her. Some one must take her and improve her figure, and give her the shape in which it is proper for her to grow. Accordingly, the young girl comes some day from the dressmaker with this demand: "Mme. ---- (the dressmaker) says that I am getting into horrid shape, and must have a pair of corsets immediately." The corsets are bought and worn, and the physical deterioration begins. Miss Frances E. Willard thus touchingly refers to the bondage of fashion: "But there came a day--alas! the day of my youth--on which I was as literally caught out of the fields and pastures as was ever a young colt; confronted by a long dress that had been made for me, corsets and high-heeled shoes that had been bought, hair-pins and ribbons for my straying locks, and I was told that it simply 'wouldn't answer' to 'run wild' another day. Company from the city was expected; I must be made presentable; 'I had _got_ to look like other folks.' "That was a long time ago, but I have never known a single physically reasonable day since that sweet May morning, when I cried in vain for longer lease of liberty." Mrs. Frances E. Russell, whose significant paper read at the Woman's Council elicited universal approbation, in the following extract from her able essay in THE ARENA sounds a more hopeful note than her illustrious predecessors, for she is nearer the dawn, and the horizon of woman's freedom is broadening: