SAINTS, AND THEIR BODIES 15 
throbbing feet pause in their tingling motion, 
and the frosty air is filled with the shrill sound 
of distant steel, the resounding of the ice, and 
the echoes up the hillsides ? — or sailing, beating 
up against a stiff breeze, with the waves thump- 
ing under the bow, as if a dozen sea-gods had 
laid their heads together to resist it ?— or climb- 
ing tall trees, where the higher foliage, closing 
around, cures the dizziness which began below, 
and one feels as if he had left a coward beneath 
and found a hero above ?—or the joyous hour 
of crowded life in football or cricket ?— or the 
gallant glories of riding, and the jubilee of 
swimming ? 
It is safe to cling still to the belief that the 
Persian curriculum of studies — to ride, to shoot, 
and to speak the truth —is the better part of 
a boy’s education. As the urchin is undoubt- 
edly physically safer for having learned to turna 
somerset and fire a gun, perilous though these 
feats appear to mothers, so his soul is made 
healthier, larger, freer, stronger, by hours and 
days of manly exercise and copious draughts of 
open air, at whatever risk of idle habits and 
bad companions. Even if the balance is some- 
times lost, and play prevails, what matter? It 
was a pupil of William Wells who wrote 
“The hours the idle schoolboy squandered 
The man would die ere he’d forget.” 
