will be vigorous and elastic—­vital to the finger tips.  Better that our youth should have a healthy physique, even if they cannot read before they are ten years old, as in this case they would soon overtake and outstrip the pale, narrow-chested child who is the wonder of the nursery and the Sunday-school.  Children are animals that are to be made the most of.  Give them ample pasturage, and let them be as free as is consistent with the discipline they need; keep the girls out of corsets and tight shoes, give them plain food, fresh air, and plenty of sleep.”

Nothing invites disease so much as the present style of living among the well-to-do people.  Nearly everything tends among this class to deteriorate general health, and, since their numbers have within the last decade greatly increased, the influence on the country must be markedly detrimental, and, but for the steady flow of vitalizing blood from the Old World, the whole Yankee race would ere long, inevitably disappear.

We have dwelt in this chapter at considerable length on the importance of right training and education of the young, and especially of girls, though no more than the subject seems to demand.  Boys are naturally more out of doors, since their love of out-of-door life is greater than that of girls, and their sports all lead them into the open air, and by this means they more easily correct the constitutional and natural tendencies to disease, if any there be.  Then, too, the iron hand of fashion has not fastened itself so relentlessly upon them as to dwarf their bodies and warp their souls, as it has in some degree the gentler and better and more tender half of mankind, to whom the larger share of this chapter seems the more directly to apply.

CHAPTER IX.

HINTS TO INVALIDS AND OTHERS.

Indiscretions.—­Care of themselves.—­Singular effect of consumption on mind.—­How to dress.—­Absurdities of dress.—­Diet.—­Habits of people.—­How English people eat.—­What consumptives should eat.—­Things to be remembered.—­The vanity of the race.—­Pork an objectionable article of diet.—­Characteristics of the South.—­Regularity in eating.—­The use of ardent spirits by invalids.—­The necessity of exercise.—­The country the best place to train children.—­Examples in high quarters.—­Sleep the best physician.—­Ventilation.—­Damp rooms.—­How to bathe.

It matters not what virtues climates may possess, if certain fundamental laws regulating health are to be disregarded by the invalid.  The robust and strong may, perhaps, for a season violate these laws with impunity; but, even in their cases, every serious indiscretion, if not immediately felt, is as a draft on them, bearing some future date, sure of presentation, while the payment is absolute.  It may be five, fifteen, or fifty years ere the boomerang of indiscretion returns, but come it will.  Invalids will need to watch and guard against all pernicious habits, and to forego doing many things which they were accustomed to do while in health, but which under the altered circumstances are extremely injurious.