GYMNASTIC EXERCISE. 



The hardest workers are brain-workers. Moreover the mechanic, 

 and even the farmer, is comparatively without exercise ; he tends his 

 machine or rides on his agricultural implement. The daily laborers, 

 in the old, active sense of labor, are already in a minority, and that 

 minority is growing smaller every day with the invention of new 

 machinery and new applications of old machines. Our great cities 

 shut up millions of people to lives of severest toil without any 

 suitable or proper exercise. All the children of the wealthy, and 

 many of those in moderate circumstances, are reared to do nothing 

 useful, or to wait through life for the turning up of some lucky 

 chance. The employments of the women consist of fancy-work, 

 novel-reading and social dissipation. They have no health, no vigor, 

 no stamina. They are utterly unfit to be wives and mothers. Late 

 hours, luxurious living, bad air and want of exercise have made of 

 them the mere effigies of women. Our young men, boys, and even 

 some of our modern girls, who are distinguished or disgraced by 

 the epithet " fast," are addicted to the use of tobacco and other 

 poisonous stimulants. And against the encroachments of these 

 insidious destroyers they can set up no defensive bulwarks of strong 

 health and vigorous constitution. They, therefore, succumb ana 

 fall easy victims, where otherwise they might long resist and even 

 overcome the enemy. 



The Duty of Public Authorities. All this may be 

 remedied, in large part at least, by the establishing of public and 

 free gymnasiums in every city and village of our land, or at least 

 their universal association with educational institutions. It is the 

 obvious duty of the State to provide for the physical welfare 

 and development of her citizens, and this is her true interest as 

 well. To encourage her in this she has the good example of the 

 best and strongest of the ancient states. The wisest governments 

 of ancient and modern times have made this provision, for the 

 plain reason that it was the great constituent and reservoir of their 

 own strength. More than anything else it fosters virtue. There is 

 something naturally antagonistic between vice and vigor. Idleness 

 and luxury, on the other hand, are the natural parents of social 

 evil; a whole brood of intemperate appetites and malignant passions 

 are born of this couple. 



No doubt the -public-school system of our later years shows a 

 wonderful advance in the direction of paternal government. The 

 world has never seen anything like it. It goes oefore all thought 

 and all theory. It outstrips the most radical speculation. It 

 springs up like the product of magic in the silence and night of 

 thought, and while the world's mind is asleep. And, once in being, 

 its growth is as marvelous as was its birth. Already it fills the 

 towns and villages of the land; its commissioners are almost sover- 

 eign legislators; it has become one of the great factors in political 

 combinations; and it grows daily in practical and pecuniary impor- 

 tance. Very soon the rural districts must demand their fair pro- 



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