re is no kind of effort to train the physical
system by appropriate exercise. Something of the sort was attempted
years ago in the infant schools, but soon given up; and now, from the
time study first begins, the muscles are ignored in all primary schools.
One of the first results is the loss of that animal vigor which formerly
made the boy love motion for its own sake. Even in his leisure hours he
no longer leaps and runs as he used to; he learns to sit still, and by
and by sitting and lounging come to be the habit, and vigorous motion
the exception, for most of the hours of the day. The education thus
begun goes on from primary to high school, from high school to college,
from college through professional studies of law, medicine, or theology,
with this steady contempt for the body, with no provision for its
culture, training, or development, but rather a direct and evident
provision for its deterioration and decay.

The want of suitable ventilation in school-rooms, recitation-rooms,
lecture-rooms, offices, court-rooms, conference-rooms, and vestries,
where young students of law, medicine, and theology acquire their
earlier practice, is something simply appalling. Of itself it would
answer for men the question, why so many thousand glad, active children
come to a middle life without joy,--a life whose best estate is a sort
of slow, plodding endurance. The despite and hatred which most men seem
to feel for God's gift of fresh air, and their resolution to breathe as
little of it as possible, could only come from a long course of
education, in which they have been accustomed to live without it. Let
any one notice the conduct of our American people travelling in railroad
cars. We will suppose that about half of them are what might be called
well-educated people, who have learned in books, or otherwise, that the
air breathed from the lungs is laden with impurities,--that it is
noxious and poisonous; and yet, travel with these people half a day, and
you would suppose from their actions that they considered the external
air as a poison created expressly to injure them, and that the only
course of safety lay in keeping the cars hermetically sealed, and
breathing over and over the vapor from each others' lungs. If a person
in despair at the intolerable foulness raises a window, what frowns from
all the neighboring seats, especially from great rough-coated men, who
always seem the first to be apprehensive! The request to "put do