t that
which is persevered in after a hot or aching head commands desistance.
Not that bodily exertion which is pleasant or indifferent, does injury;
but that which is continued when exhaustion forbids. It is true that, in
those who have long led unhealthy lives, the sensations are not
trustworthy guides. People who have for years been almost constantly
in-doors, who have exercised their brains very much and their bodies
scarcely at all, who in eating have obeyed their clocks without
consulting their stomachs, may very likely be misled by their vitiated
feelings. But their abnormal state is itself the result of transgressing
their feelings. Had they from childhood never disobeyed what we may term
the physical conscience, it would not have been seared, but would have
remained a faithful monitor.

Among the sensations serving for our guidance are those of heat and
cold; and a clothing for children which does not carefully consult these
sensations, is to be condemned. The common notion about "hardening" is a
grievous delusion. Not a few children are "hardened" out of the world;
and those who survive, permanently suffer either in growth or
constitution. "Their delicate appearance furnishes ample indication of
the mischief thus produced, and their frequent attacks of illness might
prove a warning even to unreflecting parents," says Dr. Combe. The
reasoning on which this hardening-theory rests is extremely superficial.
Wealthy parents, seeing little peasant boys and girls playing about in
the open air only half-clothed, and joining with this fact the general
healthiness of labouring people, draw the unwarrantable conclusion that
the healthiness is the result of the exposure, and resolve to keep their
own offspring scantily covered! It is forgotten that these urchins who
gambol upon village-greens are in many respects favourably
circumstanced--that their lives are spent in almost perpetual play; that
they are all day breathing fresh air; and that their systems are not
disturbed by over-taxed brains. For aught that appears to the contrary,
their good health may be maintained, not in consequence of, but in spite
of, their deficient clothing. This alternative conclusion we believe to
be the true one; and that an inevitable detriment results from the loss
of animal heat to which they are subject.

For when, the constitution being sound enough to bear it, exposure does
produce hardness, it does so at the expense of growth. This tr