MUSCULAR EXERCISE. 141 



throw too great a strain on the joints should be avoided. 

 After that up to commencing manhood or maidenhood any 

 kind of outdoor exercise for healthy persons is good, and 

 girls are all the better for being allowed to join in their 

 brothers' sports. Half of the debility and general ill-health 

 of so many of our women is the consequence of deficient ex- 

 ercise during early life; and the day, which fortunately 

 seems approaching, which will see dolls as unknown to, or 

 ,as despised by, healthy girls as healthy boys, will see the be- 

 ginning of a great improvement in the stamina of the 

 female portion of our population. 



Exercise in Youth should be regulated largely by sex; 

 not that women are to be shut up and made pale, delicate, 

 and unfit to share the duties or participate fully in the 

 pleasures of life; but the other calls on the strength of the 

 young woman render vigorous muscular work often unad- 

 Tisable, especially under conditions where it is apt to be 

 iollowed by a chill. 



A healthy boy or young man may do nearly anything; 

 but until twenty-two or twenty-three very prolonged effort 

 is unadvisable. The frame is still not firmly knit or as 

 capable of endurance as it will subsequently become. 



Girls should be allowed to ride or play out-door games 

 in moderation, and in any case should not be cribbed in 

 tight stays or tight boots. A flannel dress and proper 

 lawn-tennis shoes are as necessary for the healthy and safe 

 enjoyment of an afternoon at that game by a girl as they 

 4ire for her brother in the base-ball field. Rowing is excel- 

 lei.t for girls if there be any one to teach them to do it prop- 

 erly, with the legs and back and not with the arms only, as 

 women are so apt to row. Properly practiced it strengthens 

 the back and improves the carriage. 



Exercise in Adult Life. Up to forty a man may carry 

 on safely the exercises of youth, but after that sudden ef- 

 forts should be avoided. A lad of twenty-one or so may, if 

 trained, safely run a quarter-mile race, but to a man of 

 forty-five it would be dangerous, for with the rigidity of 

 the cartilages and blood-vessels which begins to show itself 

 about that time appears a diminished power of meeting a 



