730 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



to be a fundamental type from which we can not entirely depart 

 without risk to body and mind. The training of the muscular 

 reflexes should go hand in hand with the cultivation of simple, 

 natural, beneficent reactions in the higher planes. Cheerfulness, 

 sincerity, industry, perseverance and unselfishness may be ac- 

 quired by practice and constant repetition, as much as the art of 

 correct speaking or of playing the piano, and are far more neces- 

 sary to health. We must have a basis of correct fundamental 

 physical and psychical reactions as a help toward a proper balance 

 between feeling and will, or our subsequent building will rest on 

 a foundation of sand. How often is a physician hampered in his 

 efforts to help some sufferer, because the latter has never acquired 

 the art of obedience, or because he can not tolerate a tongue-de- 

 pressor, or swallow a pill or any unpalatable mixture, or take 

 milk or some mainstay of diet ; or because he can not be left 

 alone, or sleep in the daytime, or wear flannels, or sit still, or bear 

 pain, or use his muscles, or take in certain classes of facts or 

 ideas! These and similar peculiarities, which are a formidable 

 hindrance to the physician, and may be a matter of life or death 

 to the sufferer, can usually be prevented by a little care, or over- 

 come by proper training. They are often the result of careless- 

 ness or over-indulgence, or that kind of cowardice which in- 

 stinctively avoids the disagreeable, instead of facing a difficulty 

 fairly and conquering it. 



Another way in which children are injured is by being used as 

 playthings for the amusement of relatives and friends. There is 

 the temptation, well-nigh irresistible, to show them off, if they are 

 bright, or later to push them along in school or society, sacrific- 

 ing wholesome symmetry to immediate showy effect. This tend- 

 ency has largely molded our private schools, for girls especially, 

 whose basis is too often sentimentality of some sort ; and sentimen- 

 tality is a form of narrowness, an incapacity for seeing things in 

 their true proportions. 



There is one characteristic of our metropolitan life so salient 

 that it can hardly fail to make itself felt even in childhood. I mean 

 the mad chase after the dollar, the cause of much of the killing 

 tension of city life. It is curious to note that the nation that is 

 conspicuous by the absence of this spirit I mean the Japanese 

 has probably the best-behaved children in the world, and is the 

 land of happy childhood. A crying baby is to them a curiosity. 

 This straining of powers till they crack, this incessant fiddling at 

 the nerves, is apt to make our city life restless, asymmetrical, and 

 unsatisfactory ; the children feel it and show it in their faces, in 

 the sensitive structure of their bodies, and in the affections and 

 diseases to which they are subject. And this nervous tension, as 

 much as our tropical summer climate, has necessitated that peri- 



