HEALTH IN OUT-DOOR LABOR. 161 



fashion, whose only labor is to kill the time ? " Dire labor, 

 indeed it is, and weary woe." 



Indeed, so great has the disbelief in woman's physical powers 

 become, that it is hardly thought possible that health can be 

 her portion. Michelet, whose chivalric respect for woman 

 amounts almost to adoration, considers her wholly as an invalid, 

 a being whose tenderness and weakness call for the support and 

 care of men and so develop beautiful traits in her, and kind 

 and generous qualities in him. 



Should this be the ideal of American women ? 



Is it not rather the effect of custom, derived from Oriental 

 despotism which believes woman to be safe only within four 

 walls, and dares not trust her God-given nature under the light 

 of God's free heaven ? 



We must strive to make the home include the garden, orchard 

 and the field, as well as the cooking-stove and the nursery. 

 Health, work and love will make a home, which will be a safer 

 shelter for woman's purity than prison bars and jealous keep- 

 ers. We need to raise the standard of health for woman, so 

 that she shall not be content with the life of semi-invalidism, 

 which is the position of the majority of the sex at the present 

 day. 



How many a father toils night and day, to lay up a for- 

 tune for his daughters ! What a fortune he might give them in 

 health, strength and enjoyment, if he would only cast off from 

 them the trammels of custom and prejudice ! 



How much money the quack doctor would make out of a 

 medicine to cure the sufferings of woman, but the true med- 

 icine which is free to all, work and fresh air, is, like all God's 

 best gifts, so freely offered that it is neither accepted with thank- 

 fulness or used with care ! 



The most trying and painful form of invalidism, which is 

 strikingly characteristic of our American life, is nervous weak- 

 ness and irritability. It is superfluous to argue the existence 

 of a fact so well known to all medical practitioners, and we 

 fear equally familiar to almost every home circle. This state 

 is unquestionably due to the sedentary and confined life of 

 women, and the intellectual stimulus of education, without the 

 healthy corrective of physical exercise and out-door life. 

 21 



