failing health warned her of overwork, came to me not more than two months before the time when she should have graduated. Hard as the case seemed, I could only say to her that she must leave school at once. Some facts of her history I obtained from her at that time, but the important points I learned later. She had no home to which she could go. She had been left an orphan at an early age, with a family of brothers and sisters dependent upon her for support. To meet this responsibility she went as a teacher into our district schools. She undertook the hardest positions because they gave a trifle more of pay. She boarded herself, and often went dinnerless to school because the children's bread must not be stinted. She went through mud and snow to her school, with wet feet and scanty clothing, purchasing no rubbers, no warm shawls, because she could not spare the money. She had soon decided that, if she ever lifted those she loved so well from utter poverty, she must fit herself for higher positions, and to this end she began laying aside money that she might attend a normal school.
"So the years passed on, and at last she had saved enough to take her through the two years' course of the normal school at Albany. And now when her classmates were beginning to think of their graduating essays and graduating dresses, her pay-roll was wound up, her summons came, and she turned away from the reward she had sought so tirelessly. The autumn leaves of 1866 fell upon the grave where she found rest for the first time in so many years. This is one of Prof. Cochran's twenty. Another, the same year, was accustomed to take an empty dinner-basket with her to school, and at the hour of lunch to steal away from her companions, that they might not suspect she was too poor to buy a dinner 1 In my own experience these have been not isolated but representative cases of normal school invalidism. So familiar have I become with them, that I seem to know beforehand what items I shall obtain in investigating any given case of ill-health. And then the cry arises, 'Co-education does not answer.' It is true we have cases of ill-health among our young ladies which are not to be traced to these causes, but they are so few as hardly to deserve mention. These really make up the bulk of the cases with which we have to deal.
"We have also young gentlemen whose health fails from overwork, but to them the admonition arises in the shape of weak eyes, constant headaches, etc., while with women the more delicately-balanced functions of life are set ajar.
"The young man goes out to teach, and earns sixty dollars per month, while his sister is earning thirty dollars. In half the cases she is the better scholar. The young man goes home to the farm. He is needed in the field, but he is a man—of course he can earn one and a half or two dollars per day; while with his sister they are so glad she has come home to help mother, but it never occurs to any one that she has earned any money. When both return to school, they pay the same price for board, but with him it means that his bed shall be made, his room swept, water brought in, etc., while his washing arrives from the laundry all right every week. But she—the landlady says, 'Of course you will take care of your own room, we always expect our lady-boarders to do that.' She counts over her thirty dollars per month, and says,' Well, I must do my own washing and ironing if my landlady will allow me.' And the landlady grudgingly consents. Then—'I must make my own calico dresses—I could never afford to pay for that.' To her teacher: 'I wish I could be excused from singing, to-day, I am trying to make a dress.' Or, 'No, I cannot go for a walk, my brother has brought me this whole satchel full of clothes to mend.' In the morning he can easily learn his algebra-lesson while she is arranging on the top of her head the steeple of braids which custom says she must wear. And so the parallel runs on."From all which, it would seem to be a fair inference that, as the world is at present constituted, co-education is beset with very formidable difficulties. With their inferior strength, their extra burdens, and their more limited pecuniary means, the female students cannot compete with the male students, and in the attempt to do so they break down. The implication is that, in point of fact and practically, there are unequal standards of study to which the two sexes can respectively attain; and, if these standards are to be equalized, either the masculine standard must be lowered, so that the male students will not be pressed to their highest capacity of accomplishment, or the feminine standard must be raised,
