and tender as it is, severity encircles it on every hand. Is it
possible that we are no longer "perfect even as he is perfect" in this
regard?

But let us suppose this point gained, a foundation laid, what obstacles
lie in the way of the teacher of to-day? The conscientious and
well-meant answer to this question, from the majority of persons is, the
health of the pupils. Worst of all, this answer comes from the
physicians.

We are often told that the health of women now is not as good as it was
generations ago, and this has been repeated and repeated until everybody
believes it.

A long time ago, I was walking through Broad street in company with John
Collins Warren, when I alluded hastily to a severe attack of croup from
which my little boy was suffering, and said, impatiently, that it seemed
as if all my care might secure for him as happy a babyhood as that of
the little things whose frozen heels were at that moment hitting the
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 six
months." We are apt to ignore the large class of existing facts of this
same kind.

Civilization has done so much for human health that the invalids who
once died, survive; nay, they do more, they marry, and bring into 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 show how much worse off we are now than the
typical men and women of the past.

A few years ago I watched beside the death-bed of a woman who was the
only child of an only child of an only child. I mean that for three
generations 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 whom survive, and died herself at the ripe age of
seventy-three.

It is difficult to write upon this subject, because there are no proper
statistics. During the seve