Shall women remain passively resigned to the lamentable physical condition of her sex? or will she see where lies the main difficulty, viz., in a _wrong start_,--in the superfluous, debilitating, _namby-pamby_ education of the female infant, miss, young lady? Thoreau wrote that he believed resignation a _virtue_, but he "rather not practise it unless it became absolutely necessary." "Resignation" is unnecessary in this case. Only let every woman arouse her energies, and stand firmly in claiming her "rights" to rightly educate her children, girls as well as boys, showing no respect of sex in their _early_ training, thereby "commencing at the beginning." What is a house without a good foundation? You may build, and rebuild, and finally it will all topple over, overwhelming you in its ruins. There is no "right" that woman may claim for herself and sex in general but men must and will concede. Man is not your master. "Habit," "fashion," "opinion," these are your only masters. These shackle woman. Do women dress for men? to please the opposite sex? or for each other's eye? "You know just how it is yourself." Poh! What do men, generally speaking, know of woman's dress? Absolutely nothing! I boldly assert that not one man in twenty, going out to a call, party, or even a concert or opera, knows the cut and color of the dress of his wife accompanying him. Woman dresses for women's inspection. Whatever she does for fear or favor of man else, woman dresses for her own sex. "What will Mrs. Codfish say when she sees this turned dress?" "Old Codfish," her husband, is worth at least fifty thousand dollars, and here is Mrs. Copyman, whose husband is as poor as "Job's turkey," standing in dread of that woman's criticism! Not one male in a thousand can detect a well turned dress, but I defy the most cunning dressmaker to alter, retrim, frill, and "furbelow" a dress that the female eye won't detect at a glance! "I rather pay the butcher's bill than the doctor's," says the father. "O, horrors! Just see that girl swallow the meat! Why, it will make your skin as rough as a grater and as greasy as an Indian's!" exclaims the mother. Miss Primrose keeps our village school; she who wears the trailing skirts, and was seen to cut a cherry in two parts before eating it, at the party last week. She almost went into convulsions--not of laughter, as I did--to see Kitty Clover astride a plank, with her brother on the opposite end, playing at "See-saw." "Here we go up--up--uppy; and here we go down--down--downy," they were singing in unison, when "ding, ding, ding!" went the school-bell, followed by a scream from Miss Primrose. With glowing cheeks--that's from the exercise--and downcast eye, from fear of Miss Primrose's anger, Kitty came demurely into the school-room before recess was half over.