been
accustomed to skating, no harm would probably result from it. But when,
as was the case some twenty years ago, a sudden fashion sprang up for
this exercise, and girls in all parts of the Northern States insisted
upon learning to skate, with untrained muscles, and to skate for hours
together during the freezing intervals of our uncertain climate, an
immense amount of harm was actually done, the results of which
multitudes of women in Boston and New York are to-day enduring.

There are, it is to be presumed, forms of exercise which are not
judicious from their very nature; but I find myself at a loss to name
any one which girls desire, or in which they indulge, that would
properly fall under this class, unless it be sewing and washing.
Whenever our girls have been injured by physical exercise of muscle or
nerve, it has been, probably, because the exercise taken has been
injudicious in one of the senses above defined. Even with regard to the
stair-climbing, which our modern houses make a necessity, the harm
generally comes from the fact that too many flights are ascended at
once, or that the lifting of the weight of the body through the twenty,
or forty, or sixty feet is too rapidly performed. But long flights of
stairs are a necessity where land is so dear that, though a man may buy
an unlimited extension up and down, he can usually afford to purchase
little on a horizontal plane, and thus, to our city-bred girls, at
least, the necessity of climbing stairs exists from their earliest
attempts at walking, so that stair-climbing may, by my second
limitation, come under the head of judicious exercise. It were, however,
well to inquire whether there are not different sets of muscles called
into requisition in this universal exercise by different individuals,
and whether children should not be so educated in climbing, that they
may lift the unavoidable weight rather by straightening the knee than by
making undue demands, as many do, on other muscles not so well placed
to bear it. It seems to me that there is a great difference in this
respect in different persons. It were also well that architects should
remember that shallow steps may be, and, indeed, generally are, much
more fatiguing than steps of the usual height, for the very reason that
an _unusual_ demand is made, a greater number of volitions or impulses
required, for a given height. A greater width in the step, also, makes
the effort more difficult--partly for th