Importance of Physical Training
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If the youth can have but a one-sided education, which is of the
greatest importance, the study of the sciences, with all the disadvan-
tages to health and morals, or a thorough training in practical duties,
with sound morals and good physical development? We unhesitatingly
say, the latter. But with proper effort both may, in most cases, be
secured.
Those who combine useful labor with study have no need of gym-
nastic exercises. And work performed in the open air is tenfold more
beneficial to health than in-door labor. Both the mechanic and the
farmer have physical exercise, yet the farmer is the healthier of the
two. Nothing short of nature’s invigorating air and sunshine will fully
meet the demands of the system. The tiller of the soil finds in his
labor all the movements that were ever practiced in the gymnasium.
His movement-room is the open fields. The canopy of heaven is its
roof, the solid earth its floor. Here he plows and hoes, sows and reaps.
Watch him, as in “haying time” he mows and rakes, pitches and tum-
bles, lifts and loads, throws off, treads down, and stows away. These
various movements call into action the bones, joints, muscles, sinews,
and nerves of the body. His vigorous exercise causes full, deep, strong
inspirations and exhalations, which expand the lungs and purify the
blood, sending the warm current of life bounding through arteries and
veins. A farmer who is temperate in all his habits, usually enjoys
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health. His work is pleasant to him. He has a good appetite. He sleeps
well, and may be happy.
Contrast the condition of the active farmer with that of the student
who neglects physical exercise. He sits in a close room, bending over
his desk or table, his chest contracted, his lungs crowded. He cannot
take full, deep inspirations. His brain is tasked to the utmost, while his
body is as inactive as though he had no particular use for it. His blood
moves sluggishly through the system. His feet are cold, his head hot.
How can such a person have health?
Let the student take regular exercise that will cause him to breathe
deep and full, taking into his lungs the pure invigorating air of heaven,
and he will be a new being. It is not hard study that is destroying the
health of students, so much as it is their disregard of nature’s laws.
In institutions of learning, experienced teachers should be em-
ployed to instruct young ladies in the mysteries of the kitchen. A
knowledge of domestic duties is beyond price to every woman. There