rovided a certain immunity from
the necessity of active exercise for the rounding and completion of
their bodies. The lack of fresh air, however, soon tells with them a
fatal story of fading complexions and departing bloom. That ethereal
beauty which peculiarly marks the American woman is also the earliest to
decay. As they are the prettiest, so are they the soonest _passees_ of
any Northern nation. Could they but realize that exercise in the open
air is Nature's great and only cosmetic, the reproach of early old age
would cease. Nothing will give that peach-bloom to the cheek and that
peculiar sweetness to the eye which a long walk through the fields, of a
clear October day, bestows unbought.

One evil breeds another. The brain fed only with thin blood gives rise
to morbid thoughts. Activity, sharpness, and quickness of perception
are but poor compensations for the want of the milder and more generous
attributes of the mind. Dyspepsia spawns a moody literature. Broad,
manly views and hopeful thoughts of life exist less here, we think, than
in England. The cities are supplied year by year with people from the
country; yet the latter, the source of all this supply, does not produce
so healthy mothers as the city; and were it not for the increasing study
of physiology and its vital truths, we fear that we should awaken too
late to a knowledge of our physical degeneration.

Now what means are in use among us to furnish the needed stimulant of
exercise? It is paradoxical to say that the average of people take more
exercise in the city than in the country; yet we believe it to be true.
That exercise is only of one form, to be sure, namely, walking. The
common calls of business, and the mere daily locomotion from point to
point of an extended city, necessitate a large amount of this simplest
exercise. Other sources of health, as sunlight and the vivifying
influence of trees and grass upon the air, exist more in the real
country. Yet as many girls attain a vigorous development in town as out
of it; for in our smaller New England villages indoor cares and labors
confine the females excessively and prevent their using much exercise in
the open air.

Our militia system, including the exercises of volunteer companies,
supplies but to a very limited extent the want of real gymnastics. The
common militia meet too infrequently and drill too little to gain much
sanative benefit. The old-fashioned "training-day" was always a day of