Part 8 (1/2)

We are often told that the health of woo, and this has been repeated and repeated until everybody believes it

A long tih Broad street in company with John Collins Warren, when I alluded hastily to a severe attack of croup fro, and said, iht secure for his whose frozen heels were at thatthe curbstone

”You do not ask how many of these children die,” replied my friend, ”and if your boy had been born down here, he would not have lived sixfacts of this same kind

Civilization has done so much for human health that the invalids who once died, survive; nay, they dointo the world other invalids, who need special care; and, whereas, in the old time, out of a family of twelve, five or six would die in infancy with a persistency worthy of a better cause, the whole twelve would be saved by modern science; and not only that, but enter into the statistics which are intended to sho much worse off we are now than the typical o I watched beside the death-bed of a woman as the only child of an only child of an only child I enerations the mother had died of consumption after the birth of her first-born, and in the first instance was herself the sole survivor of a large family When my friend was born, it was said at first that she could not live, but her father was a physician, and his care in the first place, and removal from a country to a city life in the second, conquered fate

She did live, she married, and became the mother of ten healthy children, all of whoe of seventy-three

It is difficult to write upon this subject, because there are no proper statistics During the seventy-five years that succeeded the settleland, the record of deaths was very iives ical research can fail to be ie number of children who died at birth or soon after

In those days, the ”survival of the fittest” was the rule, and if that survivor happened to live to a good old age, no one inquired about those who did not

I allude to these facts, as I have done before, not because I think them of ainst the equally undigested facts of general invalidism which have been so persistently pressed of late

I do not believe in this general invalidism, so far as it concerns woe, was life ever so reckless, and so carelessly dissipated as it is in America to-day In Sybaris itself, in Corinth, and in Paris, only a feealthy people could indulge in the irregular lives which the unexareat bulk of the population

I ath of time cannot transforirl” The influence of clieneration for our Irish and Ger in the h of the operatives will attest these words to any co the past three years I have parted with three satisfactory Irish servants, ere in the incipient stages of consumption I dismissed them because no influence of mine could persuade them to retire early, aterproof shoes, or thick and warular preface to the fifth edition of a hich has lately occupied the public mind the author says:

”When a remission or intermission is necessary, the parent must decide what part of education shall be remitted or omitted, the walk, the ball, the school, or all of these”--”No one can doubt which will interfereor four hours'

studying”--”In these pages the relation of sex to mature life is not discussed”

It is necessary to state at the outset, that this preface does not in the least represent the book as it naturally strikes the reader Wo in this instance, but when hundreds of wo from all parts of the country, in private and in public, and without concert with each other, all testify to the same impression received, it is impossible that the carelessness of numbers should always feel the sa is far irl than four hours of steady study: why, then, in considering the education of girls, does the author steadily avoid all cases where dancing, late hours, and bad food, have been known to interfere with health?

What satisfaction can any girl find in the fact, that the period of mature life is not covered by the state life is included in the years between fourteen and nineteen, and as matters now are, society life is nearly ended at twenty If the beginning of brain-ere deferred till a girl were jaded with dissipation, how much could be acco localities, and since women are hereafter to be elected on every school committee, it is reasonable to suppose that unwise pressure froures of speech are , but it is quite fair to meet the statement that wethat that is precisely what God does

He gives to different plants different powers of appropriation, sets them in precisely the same circumstances, and leaves them

The sturdy oak, that centuries of storm have beaten into firmness, which fits it to encounter the fiercest blows of the wave; the stately pine, which is to tower as ht, stand serried or single on the mountain's peak At their feet nestles the wind-flower, quite as confident of its destiny, although no sun is moderated, no shower abated for its tender sake It is protected by the very way in which it is nant as that is with the charht it be oe cities cannot be said to overwork their pupils Fifty years ago, when irls at school than was ever possible in o, when my school education ended, far hter It is the uniforirls now study less, that the hours of recitation are fewer, and that dilatoriness and absences are far more frequently excused than was once the case

At the most fashi+onable, and also the best conducted school in Boston fifty years ago, my mother was allowed no study ties of history as a daily lesson For her mathematics, we took a whole canto of Dante three tiive an explanation of every historical allusion I had no study tiirls inrequired of us During the whole of our school life, we ”thought and understood” as children, and very reluctant ere to ”put away childish things” We rose for a bath and walk before a seven o'clock breakfast, nine o'clock found us at school, and we returned to a two o'clock dinner In the afternoon alked, or rode on horseback, or studied together for an hour We took tea at six or half past six o'clock, and the curfew ringing at nine found us preparing for bed We had no ti, and none of the cares or dissipations of ht foray

If we could secure this simplicity for our children, we should have small reason to be anxious about their health

What, then, are the drawbacks to a teacher's efforts to-day? If girls are not studying too hard and toowhich stands in the way of a true education, taking the word in the broadest sense?

The teacher's first obstacle lies in the superficial character of the Americana hard student The whole nation repels the idea of drudgery of any sort, and the ainst a holes with her own, hardly allows any noble effort

Next to this is inherited tendency: from fathers fevered with restless mercantile speculation, or tossed between ”bulls and bears” in Wall street, or who allow thehters are supposed never to know, girls inherit an ”abnormal development of the nervous system,” and every fibre in their bodies feels the ”twist in the nerves”

Froe families, overith house-work themselves, or, still worse, fretted by the i a ho and half-trained servants, girls inherit a depressed and morbid tendency to call life ”hard”

The spirit of the age is also against theious spirit The ”Conflict of the Ages”