ho are yet to come after us?

Why is the first health of childhood lost? Is it not the answer, that
childhood is the only period of life in which bodily health is made a
prominent object? Take our pretty boy, with cheeks like apples, who
started in life with a hop, skip, and dance,--to whom laughter was
like breathing, and who was enraptured with plain bread and milk,--how
did he grow into the man who wakes so languid and dull, who wants
strong coffee and Worcestershire sauce to make his breakfast go down?
When and where did he drop the invaluable talisman that once made
everything look brighter and taste better to him, however rude and
simple, than now do the most elaborate combinations? What is the boy's
history? Why, for the first seven years of his life his body is made
of some account. It is watched, cared for, dieted, disciplined, fed
with fresh air, and left to grow and develop like a thrifty plant. But
from the time school education begins, the body is steadily ignored,
and left to take care of itself.

The boy is made to sit six hours a day in a close, hot room, breathing
impure air, putting the brain and the nervous system upon a constant
strain, while the muscular system is repressed to an unnatural quiet.
During the six hours, perhaps twenty minutes are allowed for all that
play of the muscles which, up to this time, has been the constant
habit of his life. After this he is sent home with books, slate, and
lessons to occupy an hour or two more in preparing for the next day.
In the whole of this time there is no kind of effort to train the
physical system by appropriate exercise. Something of the sort was
attempted years ago in the infant schools, but soon given up; and now,
from the time study first begins, the muscles are ignored in all
primary schools. One of the first results is the loss of that animal
vigor which formerly made the boy love motion for its own sake. Even
in his leisure hours he no longer leaps and runs as he used to; he
learns to sit still, and by and by sitting and lounging come to be the
habit, and vigorous motion the exception, for most of the hours of the
day. The education thus begun goes on from primary to high school,
from high school to college, from college through professional studies
of law, medicine, or theology, with this steady contempt for the body,
with no provision for its culture, training, or development, but
rather a direct and evident provision for its deterioration a