se
features and complexions, stoop shoulders and deformity.

"It has required patience, observation and care on the part of our
ancestors to secure to us the priceless heritage of health and perfect
bodies. Your people can acquire them by the same means."

CHAPTER IV.

As to Physical causes, I am inclined to doubt altogether of their
operation in this particular; nor do I think that men owe anything
of their temper or genius to the air, food, or climate.--_Bacon._

I listened with the keenest interest to this curious and instructive
history; and when the Preceptress had ceased speaking. I expressed my
gratitude for her kindness. There were many things about which I desired
information, but particularly their method of eradicating disease and
crime. These two evils were the prominent afflictions of all the
civilized nations I knew. I believed that I could comprehend enough of
their method of extirpation to benefit my own country. Would she kindly
give it?

"I shall take Disease first," she said, "as it is a near relative of
Crime. You look surprised. You have known life-long and incurable
invalids who were not criminals. But go to the squalid portion of any of
your large cities, where Poverty and Disease go hand in hand, where the
child receives its life and its first nourishment from a haggard and
discontented mother. Starvation is her daily dread. The little
tendernesses that make home the haven of the heart, are never known to
her. Ill-fed, ill-clothed, ill-cherished, all that _might_ be refined
and elevated in her nature, if properly cultivated, is choked into
starveling shapes by her enemy--Want.

"If you have any knowledge of nature, ask yourself if such a condition
of birth and infancy is likely to produce a noble, healthy human being?
Do your agriculturists expect a stunted, neglected tree to produce rare
and luscious fruit?"

I was surprised at the Preceptress' graphic description of wretchedness,
so familiar to all the civilized nations that I knew, and asked:

"Did such a state of society ever exist in this country?"

"Ages ago it was as marked a social condition of this land as it is of
your own to-day. The first great move toward eradicating disease was in
providing clean and wholesome food for the masses. It required the
utmost rigor of the law to destroy the pernicious practice of
adulteration. The next endeavor was to crowd poverty out of the land. In
order to do this the