e minimum should be.
Exercise should be taken even if nothing else in the school life is.
And I say this advisedly, for health is the basis on which not only the
future of the woman's life must depend but also that of the race. Good
health, the inheritance of it, its maintenance and increase, neither the
girl nor her parents can ever hold as too sacred a trust. That it is a
sacred trust the schools are recognizing more and more, and provisions
are being made, especially in the public schools, for the defective in
health as well as for the strong. The outdoor school, at first an object
that attracted universal attention, is now being taken quite for
granted. Foolish the girl who does not learn to take the outdoor runway
for granted, too, and go out to it in high spirits to learn its wisdom,
to take part in its joys and to receive its health.

It may be accepted as a new axiom--the more exercise the less fool.
Strong, able muscles, steady nerves (and let us remember that nerves
depend for their tone on the muscular condition), a clean skin open at
all its pores and doing its eliminative work thoroughly, and clean
strong vitals make up the kind of beauty within the reach of all
womanhood, and the physical beauty which she should most desire. The day
is coming when our ideal of what is physically perfect--not spiritually,
for Christianity has carried us beyond anything that Greece ever
knew--will be more like the Greek in its entirety, its emphasis upon the
harmony of the whole body. The body is a mechanism to be exquisitely
cared for--self-running, it is true, and yet in need of intelligent
attention. Think of the care an engineer gives his engine, and it is by
no manner of means so wonderfully and so intricately fashioned as these
bodies of ours on which our happiness, our working ability, even our
very goodness depend. Health as a safeguard to one's whole moral being
is coming into more and more recognition, and not only as a safeguard
but also as a cultivator of all that is best in us spiritually. There
are people very ill, or permanent invalids, whose great victory it is
to be among the saints of the earth, but that it is easier to be good
when one is well no one will deny. Every big school has now its class or
classes in corrective or medical gymnastics, in which stooping
shoulders, ewe necks, curved spines, flat insteps, small waists and
narrow chests are rectified as far as possible in the limited hours of
the schoo