7 86 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



of total quiescence, and the tedious operations of the dressing-room 

 which follow are certainly the reverse of recreation. Dinner in pleas- 

 ant company no doubt affords recreation of a mental kind were such 

 recreation required, which in this case it certainly is not. After din- 

 ner, during the season, she probably receives an evening party, goes 

 to the opera, or indidges in some other kind of amusement which keeps 

 her in hot rooms with vitiated air till the small hours of the morning. 

 At last she retires to rest, complaining that her delicacy of constitu- 

 tion makes her a martyr to headaches, languid circulation, lassitude, 

 and feelings of sickness. Now contrast such a wholly unnatural state 

 of things with the daily life of a country girl to whom exercise is felt 

 to be a sine qua non of existence, and do not wonder at the contrast 

 between her state of blooming health and the feeble stamina of the 

 lady whose position requires her to adopt the habits of town life. 

 Ladies will no doubt tell me that these remarks are trite, and that they 

 all knew before the desirability of taking exercise. I can only reply, 

 if " ye knew these things happy are ye if you do them." And why 

 not do them ? Why not make the duty of taking daily exercise as 

 important an article in your social creed as the duty of returning calls ? 

 If you say there is no time, the answer is preposterous. Senior wran- 

 glers could never have been senior wranglers had they not found time 

 for their pull upon the Cam ; and by not making time for exercise you 

 are merely shortening the time of your life. Every day you can 

 easily find time for a ride ; or, if you are not able to ride, you may 

 take every day a two hours' walk with some companion or object to 

 make it a pleasurable walk. Such companions and objects are not 

 difficult to obtain in the town ; and in the country there are several 

 kinds of outdoor amusements such as rowing, riding, skating, lawn- 

 tennis, etc. which are happily recognized by the stern laws of eti- 

 quette as suitable for ladies, and which in performance are singularly 

 graceful as well as highly conducive to good spirits. Dancing is also 

 in itself an admirable form of exercise, though its beneficial effects are 

 usually much more than counteracted by the late hours and excessive 

 exhaustion of the ballroom. This excessive exhaustion of the muscu- 

 lar, but more especially of the nervous energies, may, in this as in all 

 other similar cases, be properly denoted by the term which is the cor- 

 relative of recreation viz., dissipation. For although it has become 

 customary to restrict the application of this term only to extreme cases, 

 and to apply it to less extreme cases merely as a joke, both in etymol- 

 ogy and in physiology the term dissipation is alike appropriate to all 

 degrees of wasteful expenditure of the vital energies. 



In recommending bodily exercise thus strongly, I speak of course 

 to young and to middle-aged ladies ; but I am sure that even here 

 there are very few who could walk their five or six miles a day with- 

 out fatigue. This merely shows to what a state of enervation their 

 habitual neglect of exercise has reduced them. Such enfeebled per- 



