PHYSICAL EDUCATION. 581 



scream from morning till night. Forty per cent, of all children born 

 in certain manufacturing districts of Belgium and Great Britain die 

 before the end of the second year. They ai'e swaddled, of course ; 

 they must not crawl around, and bother people ; and " paregoric " 

 does the rest : the child cries for liberty, and receives death. Opiates 

 are sold under right pleasant names nowadays, and at popular prices 

 in the larger cities ; but a spoonful of arsenic would be a shorter and a 

 kinder remedy. 



Not every family has room and the means to construct a model 

 nursery, but the poorest could spare a few square feet of space in some 

 sunny corner, and, with old quilts and rugs, make it baby-proof enough 

 for all probable emergencies. Then furnish a few playthings and trust 

 the rest to nature. Man wants but little here below, and between 

 meals a pickaninny will content itself with liberty, light and air, and 

 a couple of rag-babies. As soon as a child begins to toddle, it should 

 also have an opportunity to exercise its arms a grapple-swing, or 

 (if your ceiling be inviolate) a rope stretched from wall to wall. It 

 is surprising how fast the clumsiest youngster begins to profit by such 

 a chance. To the young son of man climbing comes natural enough 

 to shock a witness of anti-Darwinian proclivities. The development 

 of the shoulder-muscles also tends to invigorate the chest, and a fifty- 

 cent hand-swing may save many dollars' worth of cough-medicine. 



The progressive development of the motory organs prompts their 

 frequent exercise, and there is no doubt that the gratification of this 

 instinct constitutes the chief element of that physical beatitude which 

 makes the age of childhood the spring-time of every life ; and it is 

 equally certain that compulsive physical inactivity inflicts on a healthy 

 child an amount of wretchedness which no prospective advantages can 

 possibly repay. It is hard enough that so large a portion of the human 

 race have to rear their young in a latitude which half the year confines 

 them to the freedom of their four walls ; but it is harder that even 

 this limited freedom should be curtailed by so many unnecessary re- 

 straints. I wish every houseful of children had a rough-and-tumble 

 room, some out-of-the-way place where the cadets could romp, roll, 

 and jump to their hearts' content. It need not be a heated room nor 

 even an in-door place, as long as it has anything like a roof to it ; 

 children are naturally hardy, as they are naturally truthful : effemi- 

 nacy and hypocrisy are twin daughters of our pious civilization. A 

 wood-shed will do, or a lumber-room with old mattresses and hiding- 

 places. Well-to-do parents might add some gymnastic apparatus, and 

 for big boys a carpenter's table with an assortment of tools ; mechani- 

 cal dexterity may prove useful in many ways, and every normal boy 

 has something of that instinct which phrenologists call constructive- 

 ness, and which makes the use of such implements a pleasure rather 

 than a task. But, for the youngsters, the rough-and-tumble play is 

 the main thing ; it will strengthen their limbs, lungs, and livers, and 



