SAINTS, AND THEIR BODIES 7 
of our saints, more effectually than a cloister, 
from the strong life of the age. What satirists 
upon religion are those parents who say of their 
pallid, puny, sedentary, lifeless, joyless little 
offspring, “He is born for a minister ;” while 
the ruddy, the brave, and the strong are as 
promptly assigned to a secular career! Never 
yet did an ill-starred young saint waste his 
Saturday afternoons in preaching sermons in 
the garret to his deluded little sisters and their 
dolls, without living to repent it in maturity. 
These precocious little sentimentalists wither 
away like blanched potato-plants in a cellar; 
and then comes some vigorous youth from his 
outdoor work or play, and grasps the rudder of 
the age, as he grasped the oar, the bat, or the 
plough. 
Everybody admires the physical training of 
military and naval schools, But these same 
persons never seem to imagine that the body 
is worth cultivating for any purpose, except to 
annihilate the bodies of others. Yet it needs 
more training to preserve life than to destroy 
it. The vocation of a literary man is far more 
perilous than that of a frontier dragoon. The 
latter dies at most but once, by an Indian bul- 
let ; the former dies daily, unless he is warned 
in time, and takes occasional refuge in the sad- 
dle and the prairie with the dragoon. What 
