ividual exceptions, but I believe tight-lacing, want of exercise, and
a perpetual inhaling of over-heated atmosphere, to be among the
former.... They pinch their pretty little feet cruelly, which certainly
need no such _embellishment_, and, of course, cannot walk; and if they
did, in the state of compression to which they submit for their beauty's
sake, would suffer too much inconvenience, if not pain, to derive any
benefit from exercise under such conditions....

When one thinks of the tragical consequences of all this folly, one is
tempted to wish that the legislature would interfere in these matters,
and prevent the desperate injury which is thus done to the race. The
climate, which is the general cause assigned for the want of health of
the American women, seems to me to receive more than its due share of
blame. The Indian women, the squaws, are, I believe, remarkable for the
ease with which they bear their children, the little pain they suffer
comparatively, and the rapidity with which they regain their strength;
but I think in matters of diet, dress, exercise, regularity in eating,
and due ventilation of their houses, the Americans have little or no
regard for the laws of health; and all these causes have their share in
rendering the women physically incapable of their natural work, and
unequal to their natural burdens.

What a chapter on American female health I have treated you to!...
Sometimes I write to you what I think, and sometimes what I do, and
still it seems to me it is the thing I have not written about which you
desire to know.... You ask if I am going through a course of
Channing,--not precisely, but a course of Unitarianism, for I attend a
Unitarian Church. I did so at first by accident (is there such a
thing?), being taken thither by the people to whom I now belong, who are
of that mode of thinking and have seats in a church of that
denomination, and where I hear admirable instruction and exhortation,
and eloquent, excellent preaching, that does my soul good.... I am
acquainted with several clergymen of that profession, who are among the
most enlightened and cultivated men I have met with in this country. Of
course, these circumstances have had some effect upon my mind, but they
have rather helped to develop, than positively cause, the result you
have observed....

In reading my Bible--my written rule of life--I find, of course, much
that I have no means of understanding, and much that there are n