20 OUTDOOR STUDIES 
childhood; and among the higher classes sys- 
tematic training takes the place of these things. 
Miss Beecher glowingly describes a Russian 
female seminary, in which nine hundred girls 
of the noblest families were being trained by 
Ling’s system of calisthenics, and her inform- 
ant declared that she never beheld such an 
array of girlish health and beauty. English- 
women, again, have horsemanship and pedes- 
trianism, in which their ordinary feats appear to 
our healthy women incredible. Thus, Mary 
Lamb writes to Miss Wordsworth, — both ladies 
being between fifty and sixty, — “You say you 
can walk fifteen miles with ease; that is exactly 
my stint, and more fatigues me;” and then 
speaks pityingly of a delicate lady who could 
accomplish only “four or five miles every third 
or fourth day, keeping very quiet between.” 
How few American ladies, in the fulness of 
their strength (if feminine strength among us 
has any fulness), can surpass this English in- 
valid ! 
But even among American men, how few 
carry athletic habits into manhood! The great 
hindrance, no doubt, is absorption in business. 
But in most places there is the further obstacle, 
that a certain stigma of boyishness goes with 
outdoor sports. So early does this begin, that 
the writer remembers, in his teens, to have been 
