PHYSICAL EDUCATION, 153 



liable to diseases, chiefly because they are not guarded from the access 

 of fresh air by too many garments (Adair's " Medical Cautions," p. 

 389). It is also well known that baldness is the effect of effeminate 

 habits as often as of dissipation ; and yet there are parents who think 

 it highly dangerous to let a boy go out bareheaded even in May or 

 September. The trouble is, that so many of our latter-day health 

 codes are framed by men who mistake the exigencies of their own 

 decrepitude for the normal condition of mankind. Thousands of North 

 American mothers get their hygienic oracles from the household notes 

 of some orthodox weekly, where the Rev. Falstaff Tartuffe assures 

 them from personal experience that raw apples are indigestible, and 

 that rheumatism can be prevented only by nightcaps and woolen un- 

 dershirts. 



Girls, it seems, have to pass through a millinery climacteric, as 

 their brothers through a wild-oats period ; but even during that inter- 

 regnum of reason the instinct of self-preservation would assert its 

 supremacy if the health laws of physiology and their antagonism to 

 certain fashions were more generally understood. Claude Bernard 

 speaks of a French philanthropist v/ho proposed to offer a prize for the 

 most tasteful female dress, manufactured from the cheapest materials ; 

 and, if the votaries of the Graces would consent to a reform in the 

 shape and stuff of their garments, we could well afford to indulge them 

 in chromatics and a flounce or two, for there is no reason to afflict 

 them with Quaker-drab, if more cheerful colors are as cheap. As 

 long as they avoid excesses in the quantity and form of their dress, 

 and restrict themselves to four dimes' worth of vanities per month, we 

 need not grudge them a display of their taste in the selection of pretty 

 patterns ; let them radiate in all the colors of the rainbow and all the 

 gems of the " Chicago Prize-Package Company." Veniunt a vests 

 sagittm the dress problem has always employed the leisure of gossips 

 and Doctors' Commons, especially in cities, and more especially in the 

 wealthy and indolent cities of the Old World. There is a legend of a 

 New England virgin fainting at the mention of " undressed lumber," 

 but that tradition must be of Eastern origin. The dry-goods worship is 

 carried nowhere further than where children are treated like dolls and 

 women like children, unfit to be intrusted with any more important 

 business. The " organ of ornamentativeness," or fashion-mania, may, 

 after all, not be an innate instinct of the female mind. Madame de 

 Stael and Mrs. Lewes at least deny it, and, if they are right, an enlarged 

 sphere of activity will by-and-by help their sisters to outgrow that 

 bias. In the mean while, the best palliative is a liberal education, 

 besides a zealous propaganda of the two chief theses of the dress 

 reform : wider jackets and shorter under-garments ; no trailing dresses, 

 keeping the feet wet and impeding locomotion ; no stays, corsets, and 

 strait-jacket bodices. 



Next to the regulation dress of the Turner hall, the present style 



