OUTDOOR LIFE IN LITERATURE. 9 
All of our life is, more or less, an outdoor life. In 
many parts of the world, especially among the less civil- 
ized peoples, a large part of the waking hours is spent 
in the open air. Among the highly civilized nations 
there must be many persons whose daily vocations are 
carried on under no roof-tree. But the tendency of city 
life, with its special kinds of labor, must be to shut men 
out from the beneficent influences of air and sky. The 
tendency to exclude women from outdoor pursuits is 
still stronger. Indulgence in them can be tolerated as 
a recreation only, and recreation sought merely as such 
is apt to be a wearisome task. Homer represents Nau- 
sicaa, the daughter of Alcinous, king of Phzacia, at- 
tended by her maidens, going to the river-side to wash 
her bridal robes, and afterwards engaging with her 
companions in a game of ball, while the sage Penelope, 
the wife of Ulysses, attended by her maidens, is plying 
the loom and superintending her domestic affairs. No 
princess now, except some dusky African one, imitates 
the fair Nausicaa, nor does the modern Penelope need 
to weave the cloth to supply her family, but the labor 
of women is none the less diminished and none the less 
exacting. If it wears less upon the muscle, it wears 
more upon the nerve; and nerve is the finer and costlier 
fibre. It is a vital question how to repair the delicate 
nerve fibre, or better, how to prevent it from wearing 
unduly. Outdoor life, change of scene, the calm, sweet 
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