on each other. If a boy sits in a
cramped position in school, that interferes with the circulation of the
blood, and that with the nourishment of the brain. You could in this way
trace the cause of many a schoolboy's headache. Speaking roughly, we
might say that one-half of the school children have a hollow at the
bottom of the breast-bone from sitting in such positions, and this
depression interferes with digestion. And the moment the stomach gives
out, that affects the whole physical and mental condition. When
nutrition is imperfect, the action of the heart and the distribution of
the blood are interfered with.

The only way to remedy these evils is by popular education. It is of no
use to attempt to bring about at once; any regular or prescribed system
of exercise, requiring such exercises to be carried out in school,
because our schools, like our theaters, are what the public make them.
There is many a master who knows he is pursuing the wrong course, but he
is kept to it by the anxious solicitations of parents who wish their
children kept up to a certain rank. They are forced to follow the
present system by the inordinate demands of parents. The parents must be
educated. The father and mother must be converted to the necessity, the
absolute necessity for success in life, of physical culture. There are
plenty of men who stand as political and financial leaders who are not
highly educated men. A man who has the rudiments of education--reading,
writing, arithmetic--with a good physique, good health, a well-balanced
and organized frame, brought into contact with the world, stands a
better chance of success than the one who goes through school and takes
a high rank at the expense of his physique.

Let a gifted but weakly lawyer go into a court-room and meet some
bull-headed opponent with not half the keen insight or knowledge of the
law, but one who has tenacity, ability to hold on, and nine times out
ten the abler man of the two--mentally--goes home wearied and defeated,
and the other man wins the case. Who are the men prominent in the
pulpit? Are they weak, puny men, or men of physique? Who are the leaders
in the Churches? They are not leaders on account of their intellectual
brilliancy, but by their wholeness as men. They find sympathy with the
people because they are good specimens of manhood. There might be many
more such had they been better trained.

The best training-school for the body is the gymnasium. That