ss or care, and he is down
with a bilious attack or an influenza, and subject to doctors' orders
for an indefinite period. And if the case be so with men, how is it
with women? How many women have at maturity the keen appetite, the
joyous love of life and motion, the elasticity and sense of physical
delight in existence, that little children have? How many have any
superabundance of vitality with which to meet the wear and strain of
life? And yet they call themselves well.

But is it possible, in maturity, to have the joyful fullness of the
life of childhood? Experience has shown that the delicious freshness
of this dawning hour may be preserved even to midday, and may be
brought back and restored after it has been for years a stranger.
Nature, though a severe disciplinarian, is still, in many respects,
most patient and easy to be entreated, and meets any repentant
movement of her prodigal children with wonderful condescension. Take
Bulwer's account of the first few weeks of his sojourn at Malvern,
and you will read, in very elegant English, the story of an
experience of pleasure which has surprised and delighted many a
patient at a water-cure. The return to the great primitive elements
of health--water, air, and simple food, with a regular system of
exercise--has brought to many a jaded, weary, worn-down human being
the elastic spirits, the simple, eager appetite, the sound sleep, of
a little child. Hence the rude huts and chalets of the peasant
Priessnitz were crowded with battered dukes and princesses and
notables of every degree, who came from the hot, enervating luxury
which had drained them of existence, to find a keener pleasure in
peasants' bread under peasants' roofs than in soft raiment and
palaces. No arts of French cookery can possibly make anything taste
so well to a feeble and palled appetite as plain brown bread and milk
taste to a hungry water-cure patient, fresh from bath and exercise.

If the water-cure had done nothing more than establish the fact that
the glow and joyousness of early life are things which may be restored
after having been once wasted, it would have done a good work. For if
Nature is so forgiving to those who have once lost or have squandered
her treasures, what may not be hoped for us if we can learn the art of
never losing the first health of childhood? And though with us, who
have passed to maturity, it may be too late for the blessing, cannot
something be done for the children w