me time, as
she was beginning to get quite a serious curvature of the spine, so now
she goes regularly to a gymnastic doctor. I almost feel ashamed to
criticize such noble institutions as the schools of New York; but truth
compels me to do this. Hitherto, nothing whatever has been done to train
the bodies of the tens of thousands who are educated there. All that is
done is excellent, is wonderful, but fearful drawbacks come into play,
in the shape of physical weakness, and positive male-formation of body.

The only remedy which can be devised, I think, in a crowded city like
New York, where it is impossible to get open ground, is to have large
gymnasiums attached to every ward school, and daily exercise therein
should form an essential part of the education there. The importance of
this to New York cannot be estimated, and I heard with joy, that a
gymnasium was established in at least one of the ward schools, and I
found out that the teachers of others were alive to this most crying
need. I read too, with very great pleasure, that a Mr. Sedgwick of New
York was appointed to deliver a lecture on the importance of physical
education, at the next meeting of the Teachers Association, in that
State; and indeed every one begins to feel that something must be done,
and that quickly. Miss Beecher's book enlightened most people on this
subject, and reform is already inaugurated. It is well that it is so, or
the race would dwindle away before our very eyes. Listen to some
serio-comic verse upon this subject, taken out of your Lecturer's
portfolio. It is an address to America, dictated by an ancient sage:--

'Oh! latest born of time, the wise man said,
A mighty destiny surrounds thy head;
Great is thy mission, but the puny son
Lacks strength to finish what the sires begun;
Thy hapless daughters breathe the poison'd air,
Fair they may be, but fragile more than fair;
They know not, doom'd ones, that the air of heaven,
For breathing purposes to man was given;
They know not half the things which life requires,
But melt their lives away where stoves and fires,
And furnace issuing from the realms beneath,
Distils through parlor floors its poisonous breath.
Sooner or later must the slighted air
And exercise take vengeance on the fair.
Ah! one by one I see them fade and fall,
Both old and young, fair, dark or short or tall,
Till one stupendous ruin wraps them all.'

One can sometimes, in a smiling