716 



THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 



enfeebled constitutions, resulting from 

 overworked minds in immature bodies. 

 Look at the routine of duty in our best 

 model boarding schools. From early 

 morn till close of day, and many times 

 until bed-hours, the constant requirement 

 is study, study, study. In profound si- 

 lence, seated like statues upon hard 

 benches or chairs, which obsti uct the 

 free circulation of fluids in the lower 

 limbs, with benumbed and often cold feet, 

 with an aching breast and back, and with 

 throbbing temples, girls in these schools 

 are expected to carry on six or eight 

 branches of study at the same time, to be 

 perfect in every lesson, and to send home 

 weekly, or monthly, satisfying evidences 

 of the success of this tread-mill work of 

 an excited brain. Sleep sufficient for the 

 health of growing bodies is often denied 

 them; unpalatable, and therefore unwhole- 

 some food is thrust into the stomach in a 

 given number of minutes ; the calls of na- 

 ture are disregarded, and no effort, no in- 

 tellectual machinery is untried to excite a 

 spirit of emulation, which will impose the 

 heaviest labors upon the mind, while the 

 body is all the while suffering the most 

 marked neglect. 



Notwithstanding the long established 

 maxim which teaches that sound minds 

 can exist only in sound bodies, no parent 

 asks what is done for health, no teacher 

 thinks of bodily invigoration. In addition 

 to all this, there are many of these 

 schools in the middle and Southern States, 

 in which girls contract and practise the 

 habit of dipping, or the use of tobacco in 

 its most injurious and revolting form — a 

 habit which affords them assistance in 

 their mental labors, but which inevitably 

 destroys the tone of the nervous system, 

 and invites attacks of the most painful 

 diseases to which the female constitution 

 is liable. The results of such vicious 

 school-training are appalling. The vic- 

 tims enter upon the career of adult life, 

 without a single qualification for healthful 

 an vigorous womanhood. Their children 

 sufftM- with enfeebled constitutions, large, 

 nervous development, and excessive bodi- 

 ly and mental irritability. Generation 

 succeeds generation with constantly in- 

 creasing inferiority, hereditary diseases 

 appear and make sad havoc with human 

 life, and the sturdy couple who begin the 

 married life in great bodily prowess, lose 



their name and lineage in the extinction 

 of their great grand-children childless. 



It behooves parents to seek a remedy 

 for such evils. It should be required that 

 all schools of this kind devote an equal 

 time to physical and to mental training. If 

 they would have their daughters to enjoy 

 the health, and exercise all the func- 

 tions of womanhood, they must secure for 

 them the advantages of exercise, fresh 

 air, wholesome food, and enlivening and 

 cheerful amusements. These are essen- 

 tial, and it will be found that when one- 

 half their working hours are devoted to 

 these objects, they will learn more, and 

 learn it better than under the vicious sys- 

 tem which I have described. One hour is 

 full long for any youth to be engaged in 

 uninterrupted study, and longer, indeed, 

 than any one can apply the mind closely. 

 Relaxation should follow with bodily exer- 

 cise, in the open air when the weather 

 will permit, and at other times in rooms or 

 halls separate from the school-room. Be- 

 sides walking and running, various forms 

 of celesthenic exercises may be used, 

 among the best of which are dancing and 

 marching with music. Nothing tends to 

 cultivate graceful movements so much as 

 those exercises which keep time to music, 

 while the muscles of locomotion are 

 brought into more harmonious and health- 

 ful action than by any other plan of exer- 

 cise. A. P. MERRILL, M. D. 



For the Planter, 



Tobacco 



The bane of Virginia husbandry — as 

 will be shown under the three following 

 heads, viz : First, because it requires more 

 labor than any other crop. Secondly, it 

 is the most exhausting of all crops ; and, 

 Thirdly, it is a demoralizer in the broadest 

 sense of the term. 



Under the first head it will be seen at a 

 j glance, that it must require more labor 

 than any other crop, because it is a full 

 ! year and a half on hand. From seed- 

 jtime till harvest the wheat crop, in this 

 | climate, requires eight months and a half — 

 |and but ten months, including six weeks, 

 | enough for every enterprising farmer to get 

 his crop to market. From corn planting 

 to the end of housing-time — eight, months. 

 Oats little more than half this time — in 

 short, all other crops except tobacco, are 



