It is an interesting fact that in France, where positiveness among girls is ever so much more general than in England, the old maid is universally unbearable, and is proverbially known to be so. * * * * * (2) But there are other agencies at work in modern society for reducing the positive English girl to negativeness, besides the unfortunate and often inevitable circumstances of an all-too-long wait. For, in England, there is extraordinarily little care taken of the female body. It should never be forgotten in this regard, that although we, as a nation, are lovers of both sport and open-air exercise, we are culpably neglectful of that hygiene which is concerned with the fundamentals of life. Genuine and gentle reverence for the body, particularly for the young female body, is startlingly rare in England. Fundamentals are not faced; they are, if possible, avoided; and frequently owing to a deliberate refusal to recognize the needs and fragility of an equipment that is vital, elaborate and easily disordered, girls are as much as possible handled and treated like boys of their own age. Positive girls, particularly, who are well built and vigorous, whose correlation of bodily parts is as near perfect as it is possible for the organs of modern people to be, have very few difficulties in early puberty. They are regular, they feel little or no inconvenience from the attending phenomena of puberty; but owing to this very freedom from morbid symptoms they are often allowed, thanks to the prevailing lack of reverence for the body, to engage in pastimes and sports—even during their moments of indisposition—which must, and undoubtedly do, ultimately induce a morbid condition if the habit is persisted in. Let me explain:— To begin with, the very fact that anxious and almost fearful silence and secrecy are made to hang over all the manifestations of puberty in girls, is in itself an inducement for the young female to desire to behave during her moments of indisposition as much as possible like her schoolmates who are not indisposed. When, therefore, in addition to this desire, she feels and is known to feel no very marked discomfort at such moments, there is apparently nothing to prevent her from going a long walk or joining in a game of tennis, net-ball or even hockey with the rest of her friends, at a moment when violent exercise of all kinds ought to be most carefully avoided. In girls’ high schools and later on at college, such breaches of reverence towards the body are not only of constant occurrence, they may be said to be the rule where the positive girl is concerned, unless, of course, her parents have been wise enough to insist specially upon the proper precautions being observed. In the end, however, long as the period of successful resistance may be, the body must suffer from this violence, and the toll paid is then both severe and heavy.