Some one has well said that “it is training, not straining, that we want in our gymnasiums.”  Only when a girl is trained from this point of view does she get real training.

This basket-ball player had also been taught how to rest after exercise in a way which appealed to her especially, because of her interest which had already been aroused in Kipling’s polo pony.  She was taught intelligently that if, after vigorous exercise, when the blood is coursing rapidly all over the body, you allow yourself to be entirely open and passive, the blood finds no interruptions in its work and can carry away the waste matter much more effectually.  In that way you get the full result of the exercise.  It is not necessary always to lie down to have your body passive enough after vigorous exercise to get the best results.  If you sit down after exercise you want to sit without tension.  Or if you walk home from gymnasium you want to walk loosely and freely, keeping your chest up and a little in advance, and pushing with the ball of your back foot with a good, rhythmic balance.  As this is the best way to sit and the best way to walk—­gymnasium or no gymnasium—­to look out for a well-balanced sitting and a well-balanced walk directly after vigorous exercise, keeps us in good form for sitting and walking all the time.

I know of a professor in one of our large colleges who was offered also a professorship in a woman’s college, and he refused to accept because he said women’s minds did not react.  When he lectured to girls he found that, however attentively they might seem to listen, there was no response.  They gave nothing in return.

Of course this is not true of all girls, and of course the gentleman who refused the chair in the woman’s college would agree that it is not true of all girls, but if those who read the anecdote would, instead of getting indignant, just look into the matter a little, they would see how true it is of many girls, and by thinking a little further we can see that it is not at present the girls’ fault.  A hundred years ago girls were not expected to think.  I remember an anecdote which a very intelligent old lady used to tell me about her mother.  Once, when she was a little girl, her mother found some fault with her which the daughter knew to be unjust, and she answered timidly, “But, Mother, I think—­”

“Abigail,” came the sharp reminder, “you’ve no business to think.”

One hundred years ago it was only the very exceptional girls who really thought.  Now we are gradually working toward the place where every girl will think.  And surely it cannot be very long now before the united minds of a class of college girls will have the habit of reacting so that any man will feel in his own brain a vigorous result from lecturing to them.