The weak-lunged portion of the world must have physical exercise out of doors, or they must die.  There is hope for them if they will but consent to labor in the open air.  Those who cannot hold a plow and hoe corn, should jolt themselves on the back of a horse at a good round trot.  If that is too much, in their debilitated condition, canter the animal; but if only a walking gait can be endured, why, hitch the horse in the stall and go on foot.  Go briskly—­get some errands to do which require to be done daily; take a contract to drive the mail out into the country, or, if no business can be had, ride on horseback to the mountains, spending the whole season in the going and returning.  Do no studying or letter-writing by the way, and especially none to lady-loves.  It will do little good to send the body off on a health trip, and have, meanwhile, the mental arm around your sweetheart.  And it works against your recovery even worse when you are situated so as to substitute these mental for real flirtations.  This does not so much apply to married men.  They who have wives or husbands would be the better of their company and care.

Invalids who cannot travel, either at home or elsewhere, in consequence of weakness, should sit in the open air in some sheltered corner of the verandah, or of their room, and bathe in the light and sunshine, being careful to avoid all draughts.

A young man was just starting out in business.  He was to leave his home in New England to engage in active life in one of the large cities situate on Lake Erie.  He had bidden his childhood’s home his first adieu, and meeting with a friend, sought some counsel; this friend, at the close of a somewhat lengthy interview, and as the sum of all he had uttered, said:  that he should remember to practice three things, if he would have his efforts crowned with success, namely, the first was Perseverance,—­the second was Perseverance, and the third was Perseverance.  So it is with pulmonic patients:  if they would recover, aside from the aids of diet, dress, and all the other etceteras, they must first and all the time continue to Exercise—­EXERCISE—­EXERCISE the body in the open air.

The distinguished Dr. Willard Parker once said to us that he put a consumptive on the back of a horse at his office-door in New York, and told him to ride for his life.  He did ride for his life, and, after a six months’ journey of about two thousand miles, having traversed the Central States, he returned with the assurance of his physician that he had overcome his disease.

There is often criminal fault in parents about the matter of exercise.  They who are in affluent circumstances, and others who would be thought affluent; and again, that class (and, we are sorry to say, it is a large one) who are so very tender of their children, and whose mothers do all their own household labor, only so that their daughters may be the admiration of a ball-room, or else through fear they will “get sick” if they put their hands to anything which has kept their mothers so strong and well.