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PHYSICAL TRAINING. 157
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
- Whoever Lias Watched The Growth From I...
the sports of the town . We have In our over-grown cities to meet a totally new set of conditions . Till egress by railway is rendered
easier we must provide for recreation within our parish boundaries . The parks are not enough ; they are never used for games , and no
man or woman past extreme youth can be seen in them indulging' in anything but a sober walk . Diana and her maidens would not have
dared to hunt in Kensington Gardens;—seeing that they hunted on footand wore , not riding skirts but buskins . We need amusing
, Gymnasia for children , * for girls and boys , and for the young women who are working at colleges , classes , and museums . Let these be
arranged under whatever rules a refined sense of modern decorum may suggest . Let the ladies have their separate swimming schools ,
where they can be taught by women , as they are in France , and where they may learn to emulate the Empress Eugenie in the art of
natation , t May some good fairy induce our people to alter their absurd fashions , and cause them to arrange those assemblies in
which the two sexes unite for recreation in the afternoon and evening , — not as at present in the middle of the night . May it even
be possible to see , as in Germany , a joyous and well-behaved company waltzing like teetotums with the windows wide open at four
o ' clock in the afternoon ! The ladies cannot wear rouge in the daytimebut they will have less need of it;—the gentlemen will build
, fewer cotton-mills , but they will also dig fewer graves . We-know how chimerical all this sounds ;—that it would involve
great economical as well as great moral changes in this industrious Protestant nation . Yet equal changes have been gradually brought
about , through the convictions of a people . For the last three hundred ! years we have been busy setting our house in order ;
cannot we now find time and opportunity for a house-warming ? In sober seriousness , if we do not amend our ways , and learn to be both
merry and wise , we may indeed inaugurate great sanitary reforms , destroy the virulence of epidemics , and lengthen the lives of the
masses in very appreciable degree , —but we shall continue to see our foremost battalion perish in the pride of its progress , —our most
ardent -workers in the field of intellect fall in the flower of their youth .
quented * As at ladies the Triat and , si irl tua -sch ted ools in . the Avenue Montaigne , Champs Elyse ' , Paris , and
fref We have y hopes that g more than one of the great swimming baths in London will shortly be set aside for the use of ladies one day in the week .
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Physical Training. 157
PHYSICAL TRAINING . 157
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Citation
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English Woman’s Journal (1858-1864), May 1, 1858, page 157, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/ewj/issues/ewj_01051858/page/13/
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