We say _ought_, and we mean what we say; for we are not "so professionally committed to a dangerous experiment" as to insist upon it, if once convinced that it is dangerous; neither are we "urgent reformers, who care less for human suffering and human life, than for the trial of a theory." Dr. Clarke believes, "if the causes which have brought about the present ill-health of American women continue for the next half century, and increase in the same ratio as they have for the last fifty years, that we shall cease to be an American people." We believe it, too; but we do not believe, as he does, that the chief causes of this ill-health are to be laid at the doors of our seminaries and colleges. We believe that more girls are benefited than are injured by the regimen of a well-regulated school, and our belief is founded upon years of observation. The number is not small, of girls, who have come to us pale, nervous and laboring under many of the ills of which Dr. Clarke speaks, to whom the regularity which must be observed in a large school, but, most of all, the stimulus of systematic brain-work upon the body, has proved most sanitary. The mother of one young lady placed her under our care a year and a half ago, saying, as she did so: "My daughter has always been frail. I greatly fear she will not be able to endure regular school work. Send her home at any time, if convinced that her health suffers from school discipline." While her health has been steadily improving, she has been able to gain an enviable position in her class. One of her professors said that he had never heard more finished recitations than hers. This is only one instance, where we might give many, of the quickening influence of brain-work upon the body, and we have often heard the same testimony given by other teachers. Of course, we do not claim that sick girls ought to study, any more than sick boys, or that there are, at the present time, as many girls who can endure hard study, either spasmodic or continuous, as boys. We accept the fact, that American women are sickly women; we only protest against the false theory that makes our higher schools responsible for the fact. In Dr. Clarke's chapter upon co-education, we read that "this experiment"--meaning co-education--"has been tried in some of our western Colleges, but has not been tried long enough to show much more than its first-fruits, viz., its results while the students are in college; and of these, the only obvious ones are increased emulation, and intellectual development and attainments."