to our healthy women
incredible. Thus, Mary Lamb writes to Miss Wordsworth, (both ladies
being between fifty and sixty,) "You say you can walk fifteen miles with
ease; that is exactly my stint, and more fatigues me"; and then speaks
pityingly of a delicate lady who could accomplish only "four or five
miles every third or fourth day, keeping very quiet between." How few
American ladies, in the fulness of their strength, (if female strength
among us has any fulness,) can surpass this English invalid!

But even among American men, how few carry athletic habits into manhood!
The great hindrance, no doubt, is absorption in business; and we observe
that this winter's hard times and consequent leisure have given a great
stimulus to outdoor sports. But in most places there is the further
obstacle, that a certain stigma of boyishness goes with them. So early
does this begin, that we remember, in our teens, to have been slightly
reproached with juvenility, because, though a Senior Sophister, we still
clung to football. Juvenility! We only wish we had the opportunity now.
Full-grown men are, of course, intended to take not only as much, but
far more active exercise than boys. Some physiologists go so far as
to demand six hours of out-door life daily; and it is absurd in us to
complain that we have not the healthy animal happiness of children,
while we forswear their simple sources of pleasure.

Most of the exercise habitually taken by men of sedentary pursuits is
in the form of walking. We believe its merits to be greatly overrated.
Walking is to real exercise what vegetable food is to animal; it
satisfies the appetite, but the nourishment is not sufficiently
concentrated to be invigorating. It takes a man out-doors, and it uses
his muscles, and therefore of course it is good; but it is not the best
kind of good. Walking, for walking's sake, becomes tedious. We must not
ignore the _play-impulse_ in human nature, which, according to Schiller,
is the foundation of all Art. In female boarding-schools, teachers
uniformly testify to the aversion of pupils to the prescribed walk.
Give them a sled, or a pair of skates, or a row-boat, or put them on
horseback, and they will protract the period of exercise till the
teacher in turn grumbles. Put them into a gymnasium, with an efficient
teacher, and they will soon require restraint, instead of urging.

Gymnastic exercises have two disadvantages: one, in being commonly
performed under cove