S. R. Caltrop.

principles of physiology, you may and should find time for giving many valuable hints and suggestions bearing upon the subject. If you cannot teach anatomy, you may speak of some of the laws of health. The subjects of ventilation, diet, clothing, exercise, etc. may be considered, and much valuable information may be given in relation to each of them. Let the importance of the whole subject lead you to do what you can. It is to be hoped that the time will arrive, when our youth will remain in the school-room long enough to receive a more thorough course of instruction, than it would be practicable to undertake to give in many of our schools, under existing circumstances. But something you may do in the way of encouraging an interest in all those manly exercises and games which tend to the true development of the physical powers. It is indeed lamentable to see to what an extent the mere intellect is cared for, while no regard is paid to the culture of the corporeal powers and faculties. In a lecture recently given before the American Institute of Instruction, Professor S. R. Calthrop thus playfully hits the prevailing feeling and customs, and suggests a remedy:

"Some time ago I read a tale, which related that a certain gentleman was, once on a time, digging a deep hole in his garden. He had, as I myself had in my younger days, a perfect passion for digging holes, for the mere pleasure of doing it; but the hole which he was now digging was by far the deepest which he had ever attempted. At last he became

An Amusing Story.

perfectly fascinated, carried away by his pursuit, and actually had his dinner let down to him by a bucket. Well, he dug on, late and early, when, just as he was plunging in his spade with great energy for a new dig, he penetrated right through, and fell down, down, to the centre of the earth.

"To his astonishment, he landed upon the top of a coach, which was passing at the time, and soon found himself perfectly at home, and began to enter into conversation with the passenger opposite to him, a very gentlemanly-looking man, enveloped entirely in a black cloak. He soon found out that the country into which his lot had fallen was a very strange one. Its peculiarities were thus stated by his gentlemanly fellow-passenger. 'Ours, Sir,' said he, is called the country of Skitzland. All the Skitzlanders are born with all their limbs and features perfect; but when they arrive at a certain age, all their limbs and features which have not been used drop off, leaving only the bones behind. It is rather dark this evening, or you would have seen this more plainly. Look forward there at our coachman: he consists simply of a stomach and hands, these being the only things he has ever used. Those two whom you see chatting together are brothers in misfortune; one is a clergyman, the other a lawyer; they have neither of them got any legs at all, though each of them possesses a finely developed understanding; and you cannot help remarking what a massive jaw the lawyer has got. Yonder is Mr., the celebrated millionnaire,

Story, continued.

he is just raising his hat; you see he has lost all the top part of his head, indeed, he has little of his head left, except the bump of acquisitiveness and the faculty of arithmetical calculation. There are two ladies, members of the fashionable world: their case is very pitiable, they consist of nothing whatever but a pair of eyes and a bundle of nerves. There are two members of the mercantile world: they are munching some sandwiches, you see, but it is merely for the sake of keeping up appearances, as I can assure you, from my own personal knowledge, that they have no digestive organs whatever. As for myself, I am a schoolmaster. I have been a hard student all my life, at school and at college, and moreover I have had a natural sympathy with my fellow-men, and so I am blessed with a brain and heart entire. But see here.' And he lifted up his cloak, and lo! underneath, a skeleton, save just here! See, here are the limbs I never used, and therefore they have deserted me. All the solace I now have consists in teaching the young children to avoid a similar doom. I sometimes show them what I have shown you. I labor hard to convince them that most assuredly the same misfortune will befall them which has happened to me and to all the grown-up inhabitants; but even then, I grieve to say, I cannot always succeed. Many believe that they will be lucky enough to escape, and some of the grown-up inhabitants pad themselves, and so cheat the poor children into the belief that they are all right, though all the elder ones know better. You will now perceive the

6

The Skitzlanders.

6

reason why all the gentlemen you see wear such tight pantaloons: they pretend that it is fashionable, but in reality it is in order to prevent their false legs from tumbling out. Surely my case is miserable enough; my only hope consists in the idea of educating the rising generation to do better. No doubt it is easy to persuade them to do so in the country from which you come, but I assure you,' added he, with a heart-felt sigh, that it is sometimes very hard to do so here. Nearly all of us, then, have lost something of our bodies. Some have no head, some no legs, some no heart, and so on; the less a man has lost, the higher he ranks in the social scale; and our aristocracy, the governing body, consists of the few individuals who have used all their faculties, and therefore now possess them all.'

"At this moment a dreadful earthquake broke out, and an extempore volcano shot the gentleman who had listened to this interesting narration right up to the crust of the earth again, and, by a strange and fortunate chance, shot him up into the very hole which he had been digging, and he discovered himself lying down at the bottom of the hole, feeling just as if he had awakened from a dream; and, to his surprise, he heard distinctly the voice of his wife crying out from the top, 'Come, come, dear, you 're very late, and supper is getting quite cold!'

"The name of the country of Skitzland, translated into the vulgar tongue, is the planet Earth, and America is one of the portions thereof. If we

The Application.

The

were to look round in a circuit of a hundred miles, how many of the Skitzland aristocracy should we find, think you? What a dropping off of limbs and features there would be, if the letter of the law of Skitzland were carried out! But it is absolutely certain that this is in effect the law of nature, which does not act, it is true, all in a moment, but which slowly and truly tends to this. The Hindoo ties up an arm for years together, as a penance, thinking thereby he does Brahma service; the limb, with fatal sureness, withers away and rots. prisoner in solitary confinement has his mind and faculties bound, fettered, and tied, and, by a law as fixed as that which keeps the stars in their places, the said prisoner's mind grows weaker, feebler, less sane, day by day. School-children are confined six long hours in a close school-room, sitting in one unvarying posture, their lungs breathing corrupted air, no single limb moving as it ought to move, not the faintest shadow of attention being paid to heart, lungs, digestive organs, legs, or arms, all these being bound down and tied, as it were; and so, by the stern edict of Heaven, which, when man was placed upon earth, decreed that the faculties unused should weaken and fail, we see around us thousands of unhealthy children whose brains are developed at the expense of their bodies, the ultimate consequence of which will be deterioration of brain as well as body.

"What is the remedy for all this? I have before stated, that, in large, crowded cities, gymnastic