Morning journal and courier., 1883-07-20
9puruaI 1nh Gourisr.
Friday, July 20, 1883.
The Tricycle. and Female Deltcaey.

There is no reason to believe that tricy-
 cling is in any way injurious to even delicate
 persons Middle aged men, with that ten-
 dency to degeneration of the muscles into
 fat which is one of the dangers of their pe-
 riod of life, will find tricycling assists the
 hearts action rather than strain it's powers.
 Nearly all chronic complaints will be benefit
 ed by this form of exercise. For ladies
 believe it to be especially suitable. The la
 dies of our royal house have set a good ex- ample in this matter to their sisters. The Princess Mary, Duchess of Teck, took the initiative, and her report of the value of the
 exercise has apparently induced her iIlustri-
 ous relatives to adopt it. Her majesty re-
 gently sent orders to Coventry for two ma-
 chimes for the use of her young grand
 daughters, the Princesses of Hesse; the
 Princess of Wales gave her eldest daughter 8
 tricycle. for her birthday present last year i;
 the Princess Louise rides 8 tricycle. herself
 Many hundreds of ladies have followed the
 fashion thus powerfully set {; and 1t is to be
 hoped many thousands more may quickly do so.
 The special value of tricycIing ladies appears to me to be the absence of jolting and the support of the weight of the body.
 These are points of the highest importance The days are gone by, happily for mankind,
 when it was thought unfeminine for 8 wo-
 man to cultivate general health to as great 8 degree, and, whenever practicable, in the same manner, as @ man. In the bad old
 times, hundred years ago. under the evil influences of the French court, the female
 mind was looked upon as not unlike the liver of Strasbourg goose-as something to be stuffed in such 8 way as would make the re-
 suit most enticing to a vitiated voluptuary j; and this was the sort of stuffng that it was crammed with Gd 7lGuSeGn1. ''Let 1t be like wise observed" " demanded the Rev. Dr. For dyce, in his Sermon to Young Ladies, Ghe Gk,o opNA To dated 17S6), ''that in your sex manly exer- 1 cises are never graceful; and that men of sensibility desire in every woman soft fea- | lures and flowing voice, form not robust, | and a demeanor delicate" About the same date Dr. Gregory, in his Fathers Legacy to | his Daughters, exhorted women in this wise :: s'Though good health be one of the greatest blessings of life, never make @ boast of it, but enjoy it in silence. We so naturally as ! sociate the idea of female delicacy and soft
 ness with a correspondent dehcacy of consti | tuition, that when woman speaks of her great strength. her good appetite her ability to bear excessive fatigue, we recoil at the de-
 scription in way she is little aware of " | And in talking thus they only represented the opinion of their day. But the world has l advanced since then in many ways, and wo need no longer trouble to assume the virtue
 of sickness if We have it not For
 Women grow wiser improve,
 as Tom Moore declared; and men have i'm proved enough to allow that we should grow sufficiently wise to recognize that health is a condition of beauty; that clear complex ion, simple and rounded form, and face
 unmarked by the wrinkles of pain or pee
 vishness are the results of vigor of consti
 tuition which must be maintained in the same
 way by women as by men-by fitting physi-
 cal exercises. Now, therefore, princesses
 may set the fashion of ladies' tricycling, and
 ladies may follow the royal lead in this es
 well as in the shape of their bonnets, with
 out fearing universal masculine ''recoil"