no girl should remain undeveloped physically through lack of exercise
when she could, through exercise, make herself strong. Even to abuse her
feet, the important centre of many important nerves, by tight shoes, is
wrong; so is it to rack her spine and upset or throw out of position all
the delicate and wonderfully fashioned organs of the abdominal cavity by
the wearing of high French heels. Undoubtedly, however, American
motherhood and girlhood represent something more and more intelligent;
indeed, in physical culture women are beginning to keep step with men,
and it is upon this fact that school and college depend in their
splendid efforts to make the sum of feminine vitality, despite the
pressure of modern civilization, plus rather than minus.

_The more exercise the less fool_; and it is worth remembering that the
daily exercise, the plunge into cool or clean air, as well as the plunge
into water, is a wit sharpener, and will do more for a student in the
long run than "digging" possibly can. _Mens sana in corpore sano_ may be
an old saying but it is still new enough to be repeated with vigour to
certain people. Let us get out-of-doors and have our wits sharpened and
see more, and do more, and be more! No one can permanently starve her
whole body for the want of fresh air and exercise, which are the body's
birthright, and expect to have a clear head or do well-balanced and
helpful work in the home, or in school, or in some wage-earning career.
If the girl attempt this impossibility she will be like the frog which
jumped up one foot and fell back two. She will get to the bottom soon
enough, the bottom of the class or the bottom of her health account, but
she will never get to the top of anything. Any success, if by chance it
should come to her, resting on a basis of ill health or indifference to
her physical fitness for living and working, will be like the house
built upon the sands. Before the girl is twenty, before she is
twenty-five--the earlier the better--she should recognize this fact and