he exercise should not be too severe. Don't kill a girl
with physical training; because you can kill her that way just as you can
kill her with books. Some of our physical training is too severe for a girl
of that age. She must have plenty of the right kinds of games and they
should be in the open air, and they should be such as she will enjoy and
love; if they are not of that kind it won't help a great deal. If you can
build up lung capacity in that way then you are drawing in the oxygen;
then you are getting out the waste, and you will find the girl will come
out all right in nine cases out of ten.

It is a fact, proved by physical examination, that all during this period
the better scholars have the larger lung capacity. Those of you who have
taught in the grammar schools year after year will know that a bright girl,
one that has been very bright, will have a year when she will come to you
and will be absolutely stupid and can't learn. "What ails the girl?" you
wonder. She will tell you, "I don't know what ails me; I can't learn
anything. I have become a fool and I was not always one." The trouble is
with the lung capacity; it isn't with the brain; the brain is all right. If
you tell that girl to wake up in order to make up that lack of mental
ability by studying harder, you are doing the unpardonable sin. I am
telling it to you straight. That is not the remedy. The remedy is more play
in the open air, then you will find that that girl's brain will clear up.
Many a poor girl has been put in poor condition by being urged to study
hard, when the fault was that nobody knew enough to turn her out into the
fresh air which the Lord intended she should have.

We ought to have in every school five minutes, it would be better to have
ten minutes, between school exercises, when the girls can walk up and
down, chat with one another and get the blood out of the overloaded head
and down into the cold feet. Better still, turn them out in the open air
and let them run; that would be another blessing. Don't keep the girls
sitting too long at that period. Don't let them sit with wet feet or
skirts. That is just about as bad as getting smallpox. Teach them some of
the sense which you ought to have if you haven't.

I haven't said a word for the boy, for this good reason: you can't kill him
if you try, thank the Lord. You can't kill him if you try, not because he
is so very tough; boys are not as tough as girls, physically; but you can'