The daily morning journal and courier., 1898-12-19
HEALTH OF ENGLISH BOYS AND
 GIRLS.

If there is fact that is certain in
 our social life, 1t is that girls of our day
 in almost every class are biggar
 healthier and stronger in every way
 than their mothers ever were. They
 are so much taller that the great shops
 have altered their stock sizes, they
 are so much heavier that they are ra-
 ther ashamed of it, as destroying their
 claim to etherealness; and they are so
 much stronger and they enjoy walks,
 rides on the bicycle, and gymnastic ex-
 ercises which their mothers would have
 pronounced. and in fact, do pronounce,
 impossible or injurious. If this is the
 fact-and no one who has eyes serious
 ly disbutes it-the question is not, why
 our children do not profit by all the
 science brought to bear on their pro-
 tection, but only why our boys do not.
 We suspect, without being entirely
 convinced, that the truth is something
 of this kind. We are far to careless as
 to what our boys eat at preparatory
 schools, being content If they are con-
 tent, without sufficient inquiry as to
 the nutritiousness of their food, the
 supply of milk: and we allow them to
 be worn out by an eniurious mixture
 of work which is for them severe, and
 exercise which would do them twice as
 much good if it were not quite so con-
 tinuous. The brainwork by itself would
 not hurt them or the energetic play,
 but the mixture of both before either brain or muscles are fully formed wears them out with weariness. They
 get "stale," as the athletes say. The
 old notion that hard work and hard study can go on together without in-
 jury to the average young man has long ago been discarded. The experi-
 ment was tried under most favorable
 circumstances at Cornell University, and was abandoned; all the abler teachers, many of them prejudiced in its favor, confessing that it had failed. We now tax the brains of boys of thirteen pretty severely in order that they may be prepared" for public school life, and, while they are study ing, encourage them to play games which involve what is really violent and exhausting exercise. They are, in fact, physically and mentally worked hard, unless they are exceptionally strong, or, as many boys do, refust to let their minds exert themselves, they
 lose weight. grow too fast, and do not acquire the capacity of chest necessary to health. They want more rest, and they do not get 1t, partly, of course, by their own fault, their instinctive
 restlessness makingthem regardl all rest as tedious. The nervous power, too, becomes impaired. In the school room and the playground fierce spirit | of competition is generated, eager ness is abnormally developed, and the l lad goes home for his holidays in a. condition of half-conscious lassitude. | The holidays recover him, an increase | of age recovers him, the lounging | habit of eighteen or nineteen recovers him; and the proportion who grow out of the "delicacy" of the earlier period | is very considerable but still a good | many suffer through life from what is practically overstrain hardly noticed by parents, and watched with interest
 only by the few masters who have time to spare for noticeing such de- tail.--London Spectator.