Southwest-sentinel. [volume] (Silver City, N.M.) 1883-189?, 1894-03-20
Physical sports for Women.

balls and at church, wherever the
young people belongingsto fami-
lies in easy circumstances congre-
gate, the young women seem to
have taken inches to themselves
by comparison with their mothers
and grandmothers when the latter
were young. The men do not ap-
pear TO have made the same ad-
vance in height, although it is
often said that the average of mod
ern men, judged by the clothes
and armor of bygone centuries, is
considerably larger in every way.
The size of the women is per-
haps related to this alleged increase
of the men in bulk and height, but
more reasonable guess is the i'm
provement which has taken place
during the present century in the
care for female children with re-
spect to food, sunlight aud fresh
air. Female children are more re-
spected now by their parents and
nurses than they were before Ger
tain prejudices in favor of the
male were largely done away with.
They arc better fed, more intelli-
gently clothed and warmed, and
allowed better sleeping rooms and
Fairgrounds. Medicine has got
rid of a legion of harmful ideas
which killed off girls who had q
tendency to grow rapidly, and the
number of maids destined to be
divinely tall If not divinely fair
has thus been enlarged. Nova
days, as they grow to womanhood,
they are able TO indulge as never
before in exercise indoors and in
the fresh air; this must preserve
the lives of many who under the
old regime of close rooms and ir-
regular eating were certain to sue
cumb to various malsdies that are
now quickly thrown off or wholly
escaped.
Along with saner views OF health
has gone a gradual pushing back
of the average age of marriage,
from the teens to the twenties for
women and from the twenties to
the thirties for men. Perhaps this
has something to do with the
stronger constitutions that appear
70 be the lot of modern young
women, they being the children of
stronger, more mature parents.
But the factors probably most po-
tent are those mentioned, better
food and hygiene in youth, more
exercise in girlhood.
While our college boys have
been OVERRIDING exercise in a griev-
GUS way, turning our universities
into training places for physical
prowess and lowering very appre-
ciably the old standards of schol-
arship, literature and the arts, our
college girls and the young wom-
en- of our big cities have been tax
ing just about the proper amount
of exercise for good effect; at least
many thousands have done so. At
one woman's college, boating is
carried on in the most sensible
fashion. There are no races, no
crews that train, no cracks. Al
most all the girls row, SO that the
entire college gets exercise on the
water, instead of mere fraction
of each class, as it is among college
boys.
In cities, the exercis ise latest to
come, but perhaps the one destin-
ed to remain longest, is fencing.
The Fencers Club of New York
has been the pioneer in this health
full sport for women; this winter
Boston and Salt Lake City have
established clubs of mon and wom-
en-, in which the latter get their
exercise on the same floors and
from the same teachers, but at
different times of the day. The
Paris Figaro announces that a
similar club has been founded in
Paris on the model of the New
York club, and also a second, CON-
posed exclusively of women who
fence. The example of New York
tested by an experience of ten
years, has been found worthy OF
imitation, not only in distant parts
of the Union, but at the very cen.
ter of the practice of tho game, in
Paris itself. New York Times.
Every man has his opinions, but
in many instances he picked then