96 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



With lists of the names of these I have examined the registers of 

 daily attendance kept by the teachers, and, upon making out lists of 

 their absences from school on account of sickness, find their per cent 

 is not one fifth as great as that of the whole school, and not one 

 twelfth as great as that of an equal number of pupils of the same 

 grade who are never seen upon the play-ground in either good or bad 

 weather. 



At first sight these figures seem inexplicable ; but when any one 

 looks about his own town and sees families of laboring-men with half 

 a dozen children to each house, and sees their houses are poorly built, 

 that they admit the wind and sometimes the rain, he sees the children 

 running about in quite frosty weather barefoot, he sees them playing 

 in the rain and storm with perfect freedom from colds, and he knows 

 they are seldom sick then if he looks up the avenue to some residence 

 with its double windows, its base-burner, which keeps the house at a 

 uniform temperature, and observes when the children come out how 

 carefully they are protected from the weather, and how very delicate 

 they are, he will, if he is thoughtful, soon conclude that the good 

 health of the children of the laboring-man is because they encounter 

 exposure, and not that they encounter exposure because of their good 

 health. 



Where school-rooms are warmed by an abundance of pure, warm 

 air, and where pupils have perfect liberty to go at any time to the regis- 

 ters to warm and dry shoes and clothing, they will not suffer by any 

 voluntary out-door exposure, however inclement the weather. There 

 seem to be no other gymnastics for the involuntary muscles, those con- 

 trolling the vital functions of respiration and circulation, but exposure 

 and vigorous exercise. Who has ever heard a hale old man, who had 

 long since passed his allotted halting-place of threescore-and-ten, tell 

 of his youth, but could tell of exposure, constant and severe, in his 

 youth ? Hunters, wood-choppers, ranchers, and soldiers, are not afraid 

 of the weather, nor are they subject to coughs and colds. During five 

 years of army life as a trooper, our regiment was never in barracks, 

 and much of the time was without tents. Often we were wet to the 

 skin, and sat our horses till our clothes dried upon us by the heat from 

 our bodies without feeling any other effect than an increased appetite. 

 By exposure we were made water-proof ; and I believe children can be 

 made largely cold-proof, and sickness-proof, by allowing them their 

 own free- wills as to exposure. 



Children need the rough-and-tumble of an out-door recess to tough- 

 en the sinews of the body. Many at home are so tenderly cared for 

 that, what with cushioned chairs, stuffed sofas, and spring-seats to the 

 very carriages in which they ride to school, they are in danger of be- 

 coming too tender for even this usage ; and, if they are ever to accom- 

 plish anything in this world, they must somewhere acquire the physi- 

 cal power to endure many hard knocks in the various ways and sta- 



