I should say something as to the home-life of girls who go through the ordinary curriculum of city day schools were it not that I have of late so very fully reconsidered and rewritten my views as to this interesting question. I beg to refer my unsatisfied reader to a little book which, I am glad to know, has been helpful to many people in the last few years.[11]
[Footnote 11: "Wear and Tear," pp. 30 to 60. J.B. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia, 1887.]
A good many years ago I wrote a short paper, meant to capture popular attention, under the title of "Camp Cure." I have reason to think that it was of use, but I have been led to regret that I did not see when it was written that what I therein urged as desirable for men was not also in a measure attainable by many women. I wish now to correct my error of omission, and to show not only that in our climate camp-life in some shape can be readily had, but also what are its joys and what its peculiar advantages.[12] My inclination to write anew on this subject is made stronger by two illustrations which recur to my mind, and which show how valuable may be an entire out-door life, and how free from risks even for the invalid. The lessons of the great war were not lost upon some of us, who remember the ease with which recoveries were made in tents, but single cases convince more than any statement of these large and generalized remembrances.
[Footnote 12: "Nurse and Patient," and "Camp Cure," by S. Weir Mitchell. J.B. Lippincott Company Philadelphia.]
I knew a sick and very nervous woman who had failed in many hands to regain health of mind. I had been able to restore to her all she needed in the way of blood and tissue, but she remained, as before, almost helplessly nervous. Wealth made all resources easy, and yet I had been unable to help her. At last I said to her, "If you were a man I think I could cure you." I then told her how in that case I would ask a man to live. "I will do anything you desire," she said, and this was what she did. With an intelligent companion, she secured two well-known, trusty guides, and pitched her camp by the lonely waters of a Western lake in May, as soon as the weather allowed of the venture. With two good wall-tents for sleeping-and sitting-rooms, with a log hut for her men a hundred yards away and connected by a wire telephone, she began to make her experiment.