Vermont watchman and State journal. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1836-1883, 1879-12-24
FOllies OF the Season.

Are your outside windows on ? Is your
storm-porch in place Are your doors well
supplied with weather-strips Is your fur
mace working well In word, have you
taken all those precautions against the ad-
mission into your houses between this time
and next May of single breath Of clear,
cod, pure air that hasn't been driven through
a tunnel and then baked OF course you
have. Nobody neglects these things in these
days of high civilization. Again: Have
you arranged it so that during the six
months to come your wives and daughters
will not be compelled to go beyond the reach
of the air-bakery you have in your cellar or
in each room, so that under no circumstances
will any of them be subject to contact with
the crisp breath of winter again OF course,
a man who has any business must of neces-
sity go out of doors some. If he be thor
oughly civilized he will go very little, scud-
ding from his house to his shop or office in
the least time possible, and using every
known device to keep fresh air from his
lungs, and when he is under cover he will
take his revenge for being compelled to go
out at all by toasting himself brown in
heat so sultry and dry that no animal but
man would live in it week. STILL as we
have said, being a man he cannot escape liv-
ing in the open air few minutes each day !;
but his women folks are more favored.
Nothing compels them to go out, and so
they stay in, except possibly in the finest of
the weather, and from November until May
no wintry blast will kiss their pale cheeks,
take liberties with fragile forms, or find his
way down their delicate throats. To all in
tents and purposes they are as much buried
during the winter as any of the alternating
animals. Now this is all very comfortable,
but we guess it isn't the highest wisdom.
Man, even in his most civilized state, isn't
bear or a woodchuck nor yet chpmunk,
that he should flee to den and spend the
winter sucking his claws or munching chest
nuts. Neither his body nor his mind was
made for any such business. 1t is one of
the laws of his being that he cannot live in
| healthy condition without sunshine and
pure air, and when he deprives himself of
these, in summer or winter, his nerves go
crazy his heart becomes weak aud his lungs
torpid, aches and ails creep over and through
| him, and he becomes a most miserable apol-
| ogy for what stalwart healthy man ought
! to be. Not only this, but his head becomes
i stupid and heavy, and his brains are worth
| about as much as a calf's after they have
| been cooked, and no more.
IL 10 a bcTlOuo ldCb LildJ htutTlCduS are
steadily educating and civilizing themselves
into nation of invalids and weaklings.
| We are no longer able-bodied. Something
| ails all the men, and as for the women their
bodies are little more than camping-grou
for whole colonies of aches and weakness
of every name and nature. This is espe-
cially true of the residents of cities, where a
| thoroughly healthy woman is rare enough to
be a curiosity.
In bringing us to this pass our habits
during the winter season have had much to
do. The shrinking dread of cold air, the
| ignoble love of well-warmed laziness, the
cowardly notion that we are too delicate to
bear any exposure, and the whole brood of
similar fancies which keeps us lowering
round furnace register or a stove all win
ter, have made sad work for the great body
of American men and women who live in
cities and, unless in this respect and many
others we turn over new leaf, we might as
well make our wills bequeathing the coun-
try to some hardy race of foreigners, and
be buried. The painful peteriug out of the
Yankee race cannot be pleasant or profit
able. But the cause suggests the cure,
which is, in word, outdoor exercise; not
only in summer when it is uncomfortable
staying in the house, not only for men and
boys, but for women and children, in spring
and fall and winter, at all times and at all
seasons.
There will not be five days so cold. nor
fifteen so stormy, that it will not do woman,
properly clad, more good than hurt to spend
an hour or two outof-doors, and if there
was some law of church or state to turn
every one not confined to her bed into the
street for two hours every day, spring would
find us with much fewer invalids on our
hands than we shall have now.
Get out-of-doors. If you own team, use
it; if not, and you can afford it, buy one.
If your purse is short, patronize the horse
cars, and if it is empty go afoot If you
have friends visit them; il you have not, go
and make peace with your enemies Go up
street and down street, anywhere and every.
where. Do anything to get out of your dens
-Mdnchesfer Mirror