inflexible rules of the school, unwilling to seek advice from any one,
almost ashamed of her own physique, she ingeniously protected herself
against exposure, and went on intellectually leading her companions,
and physically defying nature. At the end of a year, she went home
with a gratifying report from her teachers, and pale cheeks and a
variety of aches. Her parents were pleased, and perhaps a little
anxious. She is a good scholar, said her father; somewhat over-worked
possibly; and so he gave her a trip among the mountains, and a week or
two at the seashore. After her vacation she returned to school, and
repeated the previous year's experience,--constant, sustained work,
recitation and study for all days alike, a hemorrhage once a month
that would make the stroke oar of the University crew falter, and a
brilliant scholar. Before the expiration of the second year, Nature
began to assert her authority. The paleness of Miss A's complexion
increased. An unaccountable and uncontrollable twitching of a
rhythmical sort got into the muscles of her face, and made her hands
go and feet jump. She was sent home, and her physician called, who at
once diagnosticated chorea (St. Vitus' dance), and said she had
studied too hard, and wisely prescribed no study and a long vacation.
Her parents took her to Europe. A year of the sea and the Alps, of
England and the Continent, the Rhine and Italy, worked like a charm.
The sluiceways were controlled, the blood saved, and color and health
returned. She came back seemingly well, and at the age of eighteen
went to her old school once more. During all this time not a word had
been said to her by her parents, her physician, or her teachers, about
any periodical care of herself; and the rules of the school did not
acknowledge the catamenia. The labor and regimen of the school soon
brought on the old menorrhagic trouble in the old way, with the
addition of occasional faintings to emphasize Nature's warnings. She
persisted in getting her education, however, and graduated at