I spent four or five days doing little else than going through these
truly wonderful schools. I stayed more than three hours in one of them,
wondering at all I saw, admiring the stately order, the unbroken
discipline of the whole arrangements, and the wonderful quickness and
intelligence of the scholars. That same evening I went to see a friend,
whose daughter, a child of thirteen, was at one of the ward schools. I
examined her in algebra, and found that the little girl of thirteen
could hold her own with many of a larger growth. Did she go to school
to-day? asked I. No, was the answer, she has not been for some time, as
she was beginning to get quite a serious curvature of the spine, so now
she goes regularly to a gymnastic doctor. I almost feel ashamed to
criticize such noble institutions as the schools of New York; but truth
compels me to do this. Hitherto, nothing whatever has been done to train
the bodies of the tens of thousands who are educated there. All that is
done is excellent, is wonderful, but fearful drawbacks come into play,
in the shape of physical weakness, and positive male-formation of body.

The only remedy which can be devised, I think, in a crowded city like
New York, where it is impossible to get open ground, is to have large
gymnasiums attached to every ward school, and daily exercise therein
should form an essential part of the education there. The importance of
this to New York cannot be estimated, and I heard with joy, that a
gymnasium was established in at least one of the ward schools, and I
found out that the teachers of others were alive to this most crying
need. I read too, with very great pleasure, that a Mr. Sedgwick of New
York was appointed to deliver a lecture on the importance of physical
education, at the next meeting of the Teachers Association, in that
State; and indeed every one begins to feel that something must be done,
and that quickly. Miss Beecher's book enlightened most people on this
subject, and reform is already inaugurated. It is well that it is so, or