irregular, another complains of almost constant headache, while still another is compelled for some months to abandon school-life. Some of this results from over-study, but there is also another cause. Parents who are constantly permitting themselves to be overtaxed with brainwork become more or less weakened in their physical functions, and transmit these same defects to their children. That the child therefore may have a healthy brain, that of the parent must also be healthfully exercised.

It is a matter of some importance what habits we permit children to contract, and this not less in their physical than in their moral nature. One of these, and one more generally neglected than most persons would be willing to acknowledge, is personal cleanliness. We have too many belonging to the "great unwashed." Evidences are so plentiful all around us that a reference to them is all that is necessary. It requires some degree of courage to enter some of our primary schools where the ventilation is defective. It is n't all foul air breathed from the lungs that makes the difference between that atmosphere and the one you so much long for out-ofdoors. The exhalations rising from the bodies of those children add much to the sum of the impurities that almost drive one back as he attempts to enter. In order to health it is necessary that the perspiration which is thrown out by the sweat-glands of the skin be removed. This must be done frequently, and it is necessary to secure the proper working of these glands. Not only is it necessary that we bathe regularly, but our clothing,

which takes up all the impurities thrown off by the skin, must be changed frequently and aired. Our bed-clothing also should receive an airing daily that the atmosphere may carry off the impurities with which it becomes saturated during the night. Much may be done in having children improve themselves, if a little assistance is given by older heads.

It is a rare thing to find an erect man or woman. The contracting of bad habits in sitting and standing and long continuance in them have in a great measure tended to destroy our beauty and symmetry, and now we find erect, well-formed men and women the exception. There is no doubt that this is all the result of habit. It is a rare case to find a small child stooping or round-shouldered. School-life often does much toward making children crooked, and especially is this true when the benches on which the children sit are uncomfortable on account of being too high or without comfortable resting-places for the back. In both sitting and standing, children are permitted to assume positions which are neither graceful nor healthful. How seldom we find a man who does not feel extremely awkward when made to stand where he has not some means of support! To say nothing of the ungracefulness of these stooping postures, the injury of which they are the fruitful source should be sufficient to condemn them. It is utterly impossible for any one in a stooping posture to inflate his lungs to their full capacity; hence a certain amount of vitality is lost and a portion of the poison which should be eliminated from the system is retained, and the seeds of disease disseminated.

Caution should be exercised that proper habits be early formed, and that these become regular. The irregularities to which many subject not only themselves but also their children, are enough to sap the vitality of any one's system. Breakfast this morning at six, to-morrow at eight, and next day at seven, is enough to make any one's stomach rebel and become dyspeptic. Yet how many families there are in which the meals are subject to as much irregularity as this, with an occasional lunch just before retiring thrown in! In the matter of sleep, too, the same may be said. One evening the child is required to retire with the fading out of twilight, and the next it remains awake until probably ten or later. Thus the habit becomes irregular, and sleep is robbed of half of its beneficial influence. As to the amount of sleep necessary, no definite rule can be given. It is modified by the physical and mental condition of the person, and differs as much in its requirements as does the quantity of food. As a general rule, however, no one should be waked as long as he is sleeping soundly. It is little less than cruel to rouse a child in the morning from sound sleep. Nature in this is a safer guide than vacillating man.

The physical nurture of children is a matter of some importance, and it is necessary that parents in assuming the responsibility, and they alone must assume it, should be prepared for the work. If they understand the secrets of preventing disease, it is worth to them more than all the cures from yarrow-tea down to the most insignificant that sage old grandames may urge. The results of parental negligence and parental ignorance in this matter are almost beyond conception. There are

both an over-care and an under-care of which parents are guilty, and either is in many cases fatal to long life and happiness. It is not right that we should train up a child as we would cultivate a green-house plant, shutting it away from the joys and feelings to be experienced only in the open air; nor is it, on the other hand, right to train it up as we would a colt from which we expect nothing that is good, turning it out into storms and sunshine alike, or shutting it in a close apartment, where, with every breath it draws, it inhales also deadly poison. Ignorance and negligence, when so much opportunity exists for enlightenment, is criminal.

I have often felt that our course of school studies might be improved by the introduction of physiology. I would not have it usurp the place of any other study now in the course, although there are those which are of far less importance, but it should either be added or be granted a portion of the time devoted now to other branches. It is important that every parent should understand physiology and hygiene, and it is of the utmost importance that every teacher be acquainted with the subject, so that if the study cannot be adopted as one of the regular course, the teacher may still convey the most valuable part of it by means of informal lectures or talks. The teacher who talks to his pupils on these points will always have an attentive audience. It is to be hoped that our efforts at physical nurture will not all rest in words, but that some active work will be performed, and that parents and teachers will enlighten themselves, and earnestly add their efforts in assisting to develop a more healthy and more perfect race.

CHAPTER XVIII.

TOO EARLY AT SCHOOL.

NE of the wisest changes the Legislature of Penn

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sylvania ever made in her school law is that which prohibits children from entering the public schools before the age of six instead of five, as the law stood previously, and there is probably no law on their statute-book which has been the source of more grumbling on the part of unthinking, ignorant parents. I have referred before to the mistake of sending children to school too young, and I shall give additional reasons why the mistake should not be tolerated. Some may differ from me on this point, yet from all the arguments ever urged, I am still more fully convinced that sending children to school, as schools are usually conducted, before the age of six, is a serious mistake.

There is much knowledge that children gain independent of what they acquire in school. From the moment that light first seems to break through into the mind of the child, its life is a continuous course of acquiring knowledge. Not an object escapes its attention. The flowers of the garden, the grass of the fields, the pebbles at the brookside, the variegated foliage of the trees, the machinery on the farm-everything claims its notice. Is not all the knowledge that it gains in this way valua