nce, and stays.

First, stillness; a sedentary life, and want of exercise. A girl is kept
for hours sitting on a form writing or reading, to do which she must lean
forward; and if her schoolmistress cruelly attempts to make her sit
upright, and thereby keep the spine in an attitude for which Nature did
not intend it, she is thereby doing her best to bring on that disease, so
fearfully common in girls' schools, lateral curvature of the spine. But
practically the girl will stoop forward. And what happens? The lower
ribs are pressed into the body, thereby displacing more or less something
inside. The diaphragm in the meantime, which is the very bellows of the
lungs, remains loose; the lungs are never properly filled or emptied; and
an excess of carbonic acid accumulates at the bottom of them. What
follows? Frequent sighing to get rid of it; heaviness of head;
depression of the whole nervous system under the influence of the poison
of the lungs; and when the poor child gets up from her weary work, what
is the first thing she probably does? She lifts up her chest, stretches,
yawns, and breathes deeply--Nature's voice, Nature's instinctive cure,
which is probably regarded as ungraceful, as what is called "lolling" is.
As if sitting upright was not an attitude in itself essentially
ungraceful, and such as no artist would care to draw. As if "lolling,"
which means putting the body in the attitude of the most perfect ease
compatible with a fully expanded chest, was not in itself essentially
graceful, and to be seen in every reposing figure in Greek bas-reliefs
and vases; graceful, and like all graceful actions, healthful at the same
time. The only tolerably wholesome attitude of repose, which I see
allowed in average school-rooms, is lying on the back on the floor, or on
a sloping board, in which case the lungs must be fully expanded. But
even so, a pillow, or some equivalent, ought to be placed under the small
of the back: or the spine will be strained at its very weakest point.

I now go on to the second mistake--enforced silence. Moderate reading
aloud is good: but where there is any tendency to irritability of throat
or lungs, too much moderation cannot be used. You may as well try to
cure a diseased lung by working it, as to cure a lame horse by galloping
him. But where the breathing organs are of average health, let it be
said once and for all, that children and young people cannot make too
much noise. The p