with poisons, dressed in whalebones
and death-cords, petted like house-plants, steeped in tea and coffee,
till they are nothing but bundles of shattered nerves and diseased
muscles. There may be noble exceptions, but this is the general rule.
Our men and women are all too weak and sickly. But we know that our men
are by far the most healthy. And well it may be so. Our boys are turned
out to stretch their limbs and try their muscles, while the girls are
compelled to look at them through the windows. It is a burning shame to
imprison all the little girls in the country, to shut them in from the
fresh air and the life-giving sun, from the green fields and the flowing
water-brooks, from the woods and hills where health is breathing in
every gale and strength is made at every bounding step. All the girls
should wear good, tight boots, loose, flowing short-dresses, open
sun-bonnets, and then run, and shout, and laugh in natural out-of-doors
glee. They should sleep in cool, well-ventilated rooms; eat simple,
coarse, plain food; exercise much in health-giving work and play; drink
pure, cold water, and bathe in it daily; be taught to practice
temperate, prudent, and regular habits; learn the laws of health and how
to obey them, the physiology of their own bodies, and what is demanded
for health and strength. Such a course of early physical training will
impart beauty, vivacity, cheerfulness, amiability, strength of mind,
warmth of heart, and moral stability, more surely and rapidly than can
otherwise be done. Girls thus trained will possess a higher and nobler
womanhood, exert a wider and deeper influence in their families and
spheres, impart firmer bodies and richer minds to their children than
those who are rocked through girlhood in luxury and dress and shut up
in confined air and more confined dresses. We are pampering our women to
death. We are killing them with tenderness, not with enlightened moral
and affectionate tenderness, but with the tenderness of folly, fashion,
luxury, idleness, with the tenderness of vicious habits of life.

My advice to all young women is, that they learn the laws of health and
strength as soon as possible, and obey them to the very best of their
ability; that they study the physiology of their own systems, and know
how fearfully and wonderfully they are made, and what conditions of life
are necessary to the fullest and most perfect physical development; that
they live with the resolute determin