bles of every degree, who came from the hot, enervating luxury
which had drained them of existence to find a keener pleasure in
peasants' bread under peasants' roofs than in soft raiment and palaces.
No arts of French cookery can possibly make anything taste so well to a
feeble and palled appetite as plain brown bread and milk taste to a
hungry water-cure patient, fresh from bath and exercise.

If the water-cure had done nothing more than establish the fact that the
glow and joyousness of early life are things which maybe restored after
having been once wasted, it would have done a good work. For if Nature
is so forgiving to those who have once lost or have squandered her
treasures, what may not be hoped for us if we can learn the art of never
losing the first health of childhood? And though with us, who have
passed to maturity, it may be too late for the blessing, cannot
something be done for the children who are yet to come after us?

Why is the first health of childhood lost? Is it not the answer, that
childhood is the only period of life in which bodily health is made a
prominent object? Take our pretty boy, with cheeks like apples, who
started in life with a hop, skip, and dance,--to whom laughter was like
breathing, and who was enraptured with plain bread and milk,--how did he
grow into the man who wakes so languid and dull, who wants strong coffee
and Worcestershire sauce to make his breakfast go down? When and where
did he drop the invaluable talisman that once made everything look
brighter and taste better to him, however rude and simple, than now do
the most elaborate combinations? What is the boy's history? Why, for the
first seven years of his life his body is made of some account. It is
watched, cared for, dieted, disciplined, fed with fresh air, and left to
grow and develop like a thrifty plant. But from the time school
education begins, the body is steadily ignored, and left to take care of
itself.

The boy is made to sit six hours a day in a close, hot room, breathing
impure air, putting the brain and the nervous system upon a constant
strain, while the muscular system is repressed to an unnatural quiet.
During the six hours, perhaps twenty minutes are allowed for all that
play of the muscles which, up to this time, has been the constant habit
of his life. After this he is sent home with books, slate, and lessons
to occupy an hour or two more in preparing for the next day. In the
whole of this time the