of life is not feasible at another. Did any one ever consider why it is that Cornell must of necessity defeat other colleges in the United States in boat-racing, and why it is that she has been rigidly excluded from most competitions? Galton shows us plainly in his work on "Hereditary Genius," where he proves the transmission of mental traits, that even muscle for particular kinds of exercise is inherited, the boatmen on the Thames being generally the descendants, through a long ancestry, of other boatmen. The men of Cornell are not generally the descendants of boatmen, that is true, but the class to which many be longed, at least when Yale, upon being defeated by her, decided against further competition with "country colleges," were the inheritors of muscle, for many of them were men who had worked at trades, and had been thereby enabled to take a college course as the fruit of their previous exertions. Not only were many of them thus muscularly descended, but the circumstance to which we have just referred brought it about that the age of very many was greater than that of an equal number of persons at other colleges. Now, as the fact is anatomically established that a man is not fully formed in all parts until 25 years of age, it is easy to see that the advantages of Cornell were then, with anything like an equal number of students to select from, much greater for a racing contest than are those of any other college in the country. As between Oxford and Cambridge the contests are about equal, and for the reason that, while the range of selection is numerically about the same, the class of men is also about the same. As between Yale and Harvard the rowing contests are not exactly equal, and for a corresponding reason, that, although numerically the students are about the same, the class of students, if regarded as a whole, varies slightly.

The imprudences in exercise to which we have referred do not cease with men. A few years ago it became the practice in

some parts of the country for young girls to take long walks. It was so English, you know. Besides, every one who is or has been young knows how fascinating it is to take long walks with an agreeable partner of the opposite sex. The trees wave, the shadows fall, the blossoms peep in the spring, or the nuts rustle through the twigs in the autumn, all the more pleasantly for the chat and rippling laughter of a congenial partner in the ramble. But, these being constitutional walks, duty must not be forgotten, although pleasure be allowed full sway. And so, even girls at the tender, turning age, when they should be so physically discreet, would often plod weary miles in this climate, which, however patriotic we may be, we are not bound to hold as particularly suitable, except during a very brief term in spring and autumn, for long pedestrian courses. It was a fad, an inviting fad, that led in some cases which came under our observation to distinctly enfeebled health and constitutional impairment. The skating mania among young girls, especially as exhibited in closed rinks, was even worse in its effects on health, by the immensely larger proportion of the infatuated who were the victims of it.

The present evil in the same direction is lawn-tennis, but that can never become so prevalent. It also solicits the free and joyous intercourse of the two sexes in the open air, and is therefore doubly seductive. We have nothing to say against it as a most innocent and exhilarating sport, nothing to say against any innocent diversion in moderation. But, just as in England, where, from being an essentially amateur game, amateurs came to play it with almost professional skill, so here has emulation. led many a girl to exercise far more than was for her good. Would that youth could learn some of the wisdom of years, that the possibilities of pleasure flee from excess. Ah," si la jeunesse savait, si la vieillesse pouvait,"-if youth had but discretion and age were but capable!

But the physical overdoing of things by members of either sex is not the only cause, among otherwise innocent things, of depressed vitality. We have known many cases where halfformed youth have racked their brains and shattered their nervous systems by overstudy at a time of life when a better alternative would have been to saunter along through life picking cowslips by the streamlet's brink. But no such single alternative lies in the situation, for the true alternative is moderation,— moderation, the guiding star of the wise, which even some of the ancients followed as a beacon through life. We were once acquainted with a young man who must needs know more Greek than the capacity of man can properly receive within a brief college course. The college where he was a student, although one of the first in the land, one capable of imparting as much Greek to a man as he could well stagger under through life, was not good enough because not Greek enough for him, for in another college there was more Greek, and at the end of the vista a splendid prize to be obtained by passing the highest examination in the language. He left his college and enrolled himself at the other, and studied harder and harder as the fateful time approached. The last part of his study was in bouts of eighteen hours a day, with wet cloths bound about his head. He won the prize, but what became of the man? We met him upon his return, crushed under the spoils of victory. He asked our advice as to his condition of health. We said: "Return to your mother, Earth. There is meaning in the old classical legend where it describes Antæus, son of Earth, striving with Hercules, and renewing his strength every time his foot touched the soil, until Hercules mastered him at last by raising him aloft and squeezing him to death in his embrace." We said to him: "Return to the bosom of your mother, Earth; she will restore you if it be possible." We went with him for a few days, saw him revive under the influence of her balmy breath, and his

spirits and love of life return. Then we were obliged to leave him, and since we know nothing of his existence, whether he be alive or dead. But if there was a chance for him, we pointed it out when we bade him return to the bosom of the kindly mother from whom he had so widely departed.

Another case we knew, of a young man of decided mathematical and astronomical talent, who, because he had such exceptional gifts, was stimulated to the top of his bent to climb to the highest range of acquisition. Him, too, we saw at the end of a long course of superlative effort bowed like an old man, plodding listlessly along, evidently far removed from interest in life, perhaps, as he seemed, even weary of it. Some of the great monuments of Greece, although in ruins, still attest her ancient grandeur, and with the best of her literature still survive, and the stars pursue their courses as they have rolled since the creation of the universe. But what advantageth it them, the world, or the universe that a man should wreck his mortal frame in Greek and astronomical lore in seeking to reach empyrean heights? What accrued to these two poor young men, to whose cases we could add a score, in advantage to themselves or others from such self-sacrifice? The measure of one's self one should take with the measure of accomplishment. This is the plain wisdom for every human being through every act of life.

The celebrated Hufeland, German philosophic physician, instructed all who might read, long before the days of the wondrous modern advance in physiological knowledge, that life in the individual varies in intenseness, that its existence and duration depend on draught upon it. The life of the old and feeble is a faint flame that burns steadily low. Trim and stimulate too much the wick, represented by the failing body, and the flame flashes up for a moment and then expires. But, no matter what the strength of the individual, the same underlying law obtains through the fact that everywhere, at all times, the body

has relation to amount of exercise of function in its environment. Take the very strongest in brain or muscle, and exercise these unduly, or in undue relation to each other, and the vital flame burns lower and lower until it may be snuffed out with a breath. What is rest cure? The discovery of a modern physician? Not at all. It is born of the instinctive knowledge of every mortal wearied in body or mind. What is camp cure? Is it the discovery of the same physician? Not at all. It is at bottom the instinctively self-prescribed cure by the physically depressed, yearning for the pure breath of the fields and heavens.

One of the miracles in this world's strange and unequal disposition of its goods is their partial apportionment among the unappreciative. It would really seem at first as if deprivation were necessary to secure appreciation. The pent-up people of cities long for the landscape and the air to which country people never give a thought. But this is the superficial aspect of this state of things, the truth of which cannot be denied. Below the surface, at the true inwardness of it, lies the fact that deprivation, although, as it always does, stimulating desire, is not the sole or the greater cause of this difference. That lies in the generally higher grade of education in cities raising the mind to greater love of nature as well as of art, through which, in turn, comes greater appreciation of nature itself. Show us the village or little town, or farm-house, however endowed in its surroundings by nature, whose inhabitants generally seek the fields, woods, and hills for the sake of any beautiful prospect. Show us any such place where the wretched pictures on the walls do not betray the possessor's ignorance of nature as seen through art. Is it the eye, through the picture thrown on the retina, that sees? Yes, in a measure, but in far from the larger measure. It is the mind that sees through the agency of the eye as its instrument. Hence, men see so differently, differently according to their original constitution of mind, and differently according to their