hysical health to be the greatest of all
gifts, but, like most of the grandest, fairest, and divinest things on
earth, many of us accept it as a matter of course. And when, through our
own want of forethought, through neglect of the most ordinary rules of
health, through reckless indifference, we are forced practically to
acknowledge that the most robust health has its limits of endurance,
then we chafe and pine; and life, which seemed such a joyous, easy thing
a month ago, is now a dreary burden, duty a heavy chain, pleasure a
fiction; and self, weary self, rises in the ascendant, occupies all our
sympathies and thoughts, and leaves us dissatisfied and indifferent,
ungrateful and ungracious.

There are those who believe that by not attending to or neglecting their
health they are acting unselfishly. They say it is so selfish to be
always considering whether this is good or harmful or that is likely to
encroach upon the domain of health. If this sentiment is carried to the
verge of hypochondria, we grant its truth. There is nothing more odious
than a person who is constantly looking out for the weathercocks, and
who, as soon as he finds the wind in a certain quarter, shuts himself
up, and carefully excludes all intercourse from the outer world; or who
can trace certain symptoms--the hypochondriacs' pet word--to the extra
spoonful of salt or sugar in yesterday's seasoning; who is a bore to his
surroundings and a melancholy object of interest to himself; who is
nothing but a useless encumbrance upon the face of the earth.

This is not the taking care which we advise or suggest. Things good in
themselves may be perverted into errors by the spirit and the want of
judgment with which they are pursued, and we fervently believe that if
our prayer for health is answered, it will be first by the opening of
our own eyes to facts and laws to which we were hitherto blind, or of
which we have been ignorant, than to the practical observance of these
laws, and our willingness to be subject to them.

But it is not of those who are merely inconvenienced by illness that we
would speak to-day. Not of those who are only subjected to the loss of a
little pleasure, a good deal of temper, and who are learning a lesson in
being patient. In a word, we do not write for the well-to-do invalid,
but for a very different class. Our remarks are intended especially for
those of "our girls" to whom health is, perhaps, the only capital they
possess. T