years of existence, to its appointed stature. Advancing thus slowly, it
affords ample time for its full and free development.

In this physical training, there are two points of special importance.
The first is the removal of all unnatural restraints and the pressure
of unhealthy customs; the second, is the opportunity, the motive and the
habit of free exercise in the pure air of heaven. These, as causes of
health and fine physical development, are interwoven as are their
opposites. In the progress of society from barbarism to refinement, it
has often been the case that men, in departing from what was savage,
have lost that which was natural; and in their ascent from the rude have
left behind that which was essential to the highest civilization. In
escaping from the nakedness of the barbarian, they have sometimes
carried dress to an extreme of art which renders it untrue to nature and
productive of manifold evils. In ascending from the simple and rude
gastronomy of the savage, they have brought the art of cookery to such
an excess of luxury as to enervate society by merely factitious
appetites. In the formation of habits of life, social intercourse and
amusements adapted to a refined state, they have introduced many things
at war with the healthful development of both body and mind. The manly
exercises of swimming, skating, riding, hunting, ball playing; the
bracing walk in storm and sunshine; the free ramble over hill and dale,
all adapted to develop an independent, self-relying character; with the
occasional reunion where wit, science, healthful industry and serene
piety shed their benedictions; associating that which is free and bold
with the refined and sacred; all these are, in many cases, displaced by
frivolous and less healthful excitements. Our girls and boys,
prematurely exalted into young gentlemen and ladies, are tutored by
dancing masters; their manners disciplined into an artificial stiffness;
and the free developments of an open nature formed under the genial