664 PLAIN FACTS FOB OLD AND YOUNG 



tics. They afford not only healthful exercise, but a 

 large amount of excellent amusement for the little folks. 



For the majority of persons, no form of exercise is 

 more highly beneficial, healthwise, than some kind of 

 physical labor. For ladies, general housework is ad- 

 mirably adapted to bring into use all the different 

 muscles of the body, while affording such a variety of 

 different exercises and such frequent change that no 

 part need be very greatly fatigued. There are thou- 

 sands of young ladies pining under the care of their 

 family physician in spite of all he can do by the most 

 learned and complicated prescriptions, for whom a 

 change of air or a year's residence in some foreign 

 clime, or some similar expensive project, is proposed, 

 when all in the world that is needed to make the deli- 

 cate creatures well is to require them to change places 

 with their mothers for a few weeks or months. Let 

 them cease thrumming the piano or guitar for a time, 

 and learn to cook, bake, wash, mend, scrub, sweep, 

 and perform the thousand and one little household 

 duties that have made their mothers and grandmothers 

 well and robust before them. We made such a pre- 

 scription once for a young lady who had been given 

 up to die of consumption by a gray-headed doctor, and 

 whose friends were sadly watching her decline, and in 

 six weeks the young miss was well, and has been so 

 ever since; but we entailed her everlasting dislike, and 

 have no doubt that any physician or other person who 

 should adopt the same course in similar cases will often 

 be similarly rewarded. 



For young men, there is no better or healthier 

 exercise than sawing and chopping wood, doing work 

 about the house and in the garden, caring for horses 

 or cows, clearing walks, bringing water, or even help- 



