ow an indigestible dinner, and
straightway settle down again to spend literally every waking hour out
of the twenty-four in study, save those scanty meal-times,--protracting
the labor, it may be, far into the night, till the weary eyes close
unwillingly over the slate or the lexicon,--then to bed, to be vexed by
troubled dreams, instead of being wrapt in the sunny slumber of
childhood,--waking unrefreshed, to be reproached by parents and friends
with the nervous irritability which this detestable routine has created?

For I aver that parents are more exacting than even teachers. It is
outrageous to heap it all upon the pedagogues, as if they were the only
apostolical successors of him whom Charles Lamb lauded "the much
calumniated good King Herod." Indeed, teachers have no objection to
educating the bodies of their small subjects, if they can only be as
well paid for it as for educating their intellects. But, until recently,
they have never been allowed to put the bodies into the bill. And as
charity begins at home, even in a physiological sense,--and as their own
children's bodies required bread and butter,--they naturally postponed
all regard for the physical education of their pupils until the thing
acquired a marketable value. Now that the change is taking place, every
schoolmaster in the land gladly adapts himself to it, and hastens to
insert in his advertisement, "Especial attention given to physical
education." But what good does this do, so long as parents are not
willing that time enough should be deducted from the ordinary tasks to
make the athletic apparatus available,--so long as it is regarded as a
merit in pupils to take time from their plays and give it to extra
studies,--so long as we exult over an inactive and studious child, as
Dr. Beattie did over his, that "exploits of strength, dexterity, and
speed" "to him no vanity or joy could bring," and then almost die of
despair, like Dr. Beattie, because such a child dies before us? With
girls it is far worse. "Girls, during childhood, are liable to no
diseases distinct from those of boys," says Salzmann, "except the
disease of education." What mother in decent society, I ask you, who is
not delighted to have her little girl devote even Wednesday and Saturday
afternoons to additional tasks in drawing or music, rather than run the
risk of having her make a noise somewhere, or possibly even soil her
dress? Papa himself will far more readily appropriate ten dolla