100 GYMNASTIC EXERCISE. 



crime what it has sown. A little longer perseverance in the pre- 

 vailing methods and it needs no inspired preacher to predict that the 

 foundations of the popular deep will be broken up, and the loftiest 

 social eminences covered by an angry and destroying flood. 



GYMNASTIC EXERCISE. 



There are many who do not appreciate the importance of such 

 exercise, and its bearing on the development of the physical organi- 

 zation. To judge of its favorable effects it is only necessary to 

 observe some of the results of such exercise the vigor imparted 

 and the muscular development produced. Every city and village 

 should be furnished witn a gymnasium; and all, both male and 

 female, old and young, who have no other form of exercise, should 

 regularly resort to it. Many good people imagine that there is no 

 necessity for gymnastic exercises, because they are a novelty, a thing 

 of to-day, and never heard of in the times of our stouc old fathers. 

 Why, they think, should we forsake the customs of our ancestors 

 in favor of this new-fangled theory of romps? Our children will 

 do very well, if they are as strong and vigorous as their fathers and 

 grandfathers; and they had none of these modern inventions to 

 Help them to grow into men of might and mould. But these honest 

 souls do not reflect that times have changed, and that the people 

 have changed with them. We have no longer the same people, the 

 same customs, or the same country. Then we had no large cities, 

 and sedentary occupations were almost unknown. The men were 

 farmers, herdsmen and hunters. The women toiled at the wheel, 

 the loom, in active domestic service, and not infrequently a-field 

 with the men. Together they lived, for the most part, in the open 

 country or in small villages. A common necessity turned their 

 daily life into gymnastic exercise. They ate sparingly and slept 

 soundly. They had no money to spend for French cooks and little 

 time to waste in devising luxuries for their table. Factories, spin- 

 ning-jennies and power-looms were unknown; labor-saving 

 machines were not; life meant labor, for both man and woman. 

 They were healthy then, almost as a matter of course. Their diet 

 was simple, their drink pure and unstimulaiing, and their habits 

 natural and hardy. If " there were giants in those days," as no 

 doubt there were, thev were hewed by the sharp chisel of circum- 

 stance out of the hardest granite of our nature. If their hardness 

 would shame the degenerate men and women of our day, there was 

 and is ample reason for all the difference, without credit to them or 

 shame to us. They were simply the creatures of their time, as we 

 are the creatures of our time. 



Degenerative Influences of Luxury. Now, both men 

 and women have wealth, luxury and leisure almost without stint. 

 There are large employments in the counting-room and at the desk. 



