WILL DAILY EXERCISE FOR GIRLS PAY?
creasing their bodily vigor and strength up to maturity. If many of the girls in a class have flat or indifferent chests; put them in a squad which shall pay direct and steady attention to raising, expanding, and strengthening the chest. If many have a bad gait, some stepping too long, others too short; set them aside for daily special attention to their step. If many, or nearly all, have an inerect carriage; then daily insist on such exercises for them as shall straighten them up, and keep them up. The dancing-master teaches the girl to step gracefully and accurately through various dancing-steps. To teach a correct length of step, and method of putting the foot down and raising it in walking, is not nearly so difficult a task. If the "setting-up" drill of the West-Pointer in a few weeks transforms the raw and ungainly country-boy into a youth of erect and military bearing; and insisting on that hearing at all times throughout the first year gives the cadet a set and carriage which he often retains through life; is there anything to hinder the girl from acquiring an equally erect and handsome carriage of the body, if she too will only use the means? If the muscles which, when fully developed, enable one to sit or stand erect for hours together are now weak; is it not wise to at once strengthen them?
But may not this vigorous muscular exercise, which tends to produce hard and knotted muscles in the man, take away the softer and more graceful lines, which are essentially feminine? If exercise be kept up for hours together, as in the case of the blacksmith, it surely will. But that is a thing a sensible system of exercise would avoid, as studiously as it would the weakness and inefficiency which result from no work. A little trial soon tells what amount of work, and how much of it, best suits each pupil; then the daily taking of that
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