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above everything a stout physique for work or war, mimic or real, was the thing to be coveted. Prowess in knight and peasant alike was the one thing to be desired. But with the development of commerce, and the march of civilization a change came over the spirit which moves men. The active brain was seen to be even more valuable than physical prowess. The invention of gunpowder left the stalwart warrior shorn of much of his advantage on the battle-field. Then the discovery of steam completed his discomfiture. The day of the big man has passed away, and given place to the smaller active brain toiler. In these days of steam power, an acute brain and a lissom hand are much more desirable than a brawny arm. The selection of the fit test has taken another direction in the last few centuries. That is one matter.

Now for another matter of a very different character. At a very early period in the history of the individual-almost at the very commencement, certainly at the threshold of foetal life, indeed, the embryo consists of three primitive layers of about equal size: an inner layer known as the hypoblast; and an outer layer, or epiblast. This outer layer, or epiblast, supplies the cerebro-spinal system, and the sensitive section of the skin; in other words, the means by which the body is in communication with its environment. The inmost layer gives the glandular apparatus of the digestive or assimilating organs. There is also a middle layer, which gives the locomotor apparatus; and, what concerns us most here, the vascular system. The latter feeds the outer and inner layers. The primitive child in the country grows up a healthy animal. Fresh air blowing over soil covered with grass, and not with flags and houses, it breathes. It can play on the sward of the village green. If it is confined for some hours daily in a schoolroom, that room is ventilated by pure air, unlike the schoolroom of a large town. hours of romp and play are spent under the most favorable of circumstances. Its appetite is keen, it can digest its food; it sleeps, and grows leisurely into

Its

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a stalwart adult. The balance of nutrition is well maintained, and there is no disproportion. It is developing thews and sinews, and a stable nervous system. Backward as compared with the acute young town-dweller, the country child possesses greater potentialities. It is, in the language of Oliver Wendell Holmes, a late pear. Slow to develop, its ultimate development is grander and more complete than that of the town-dweller. In the battle of life, the countryman in time overtakes the cockney; and ultimately leaves him far behind in the race. Precocity is incompatible with the "staying" qualities, to use the language of the sportsman. (The introduction and spread of two-year-old races is telling with great effect upon the racing stock of the present time.) Man and horse alike feel the haste and hurry of to-day. Instead of the quiet, monotonous life of the country, the town child lives amid perpetual excitement. You cannot eat your cake and have it," says the old adage. The town child is eating too much of its cake every day to have much left to put by. The life of the crowded streets is simply a contrast with the country lane. The incidents of the street; the chaff which constitutes so large a portion of the charm of their life to town children; the excitement of places of amusement-all favor precocity in the youngsters of towns. The nervous system is forced, as the horticulturist forces his vegetables; and with the same result-an inferior product. uct. Precocity is undesirable in every way. The precocious child may be the delight of its parents; and still more of its grandparents: but the physiologist looks upon it with suspicion; and the family medical attendant knows that such child is liable to tubercular meningitis (water on the brain), and can estimate the risk it runs in the ordinary maladies of childhood. Its nurse shakes her head when she sees its precocity, and fears it is "too good for this world," with its winning ways. And her forecast is too frequently verified.

This premature development of the nervous system tells upon the thews and sinews, as well as upon the assimilative organs of the town child. The

town-dweller has, as a rule, less perfect digestive organs than the countryman. The latter has his meat-pies, his cakes, his pastry the pasties of Cornwall, the dumplings of Norfolk, the cakes of the North country. The town dwellers shun all such comestibles. Eccles cakes, Banbury cakes-all such compounds of flour and fat kneaded together, are simply abominations to them. If they attempt them, they give them the stomach-ache. Their digestive organs cannot deal with such articles of food; consequently they avoid them. What follows? What should we surmise? Why, that his preferences follow his subjective sensations. He selects what he feels to agree with him; and shuns what gives him pain and discomfort. He eats meat, and fish, and bread, which he can digest; and avoids meat-pies, pastry and vegetables, which he cannot digest, -as he knows from sad experience. He must eat what his stomach can tolerate. He is the subject of a law which rules him with an ironclad tyranny. His imperfect digestive organs rule his choice of food, and his selection of his viands. His dietary contains a larger proportion of the flesh of animals, indeed, than does that of his country cousins; and a distinctly less proportion of pastry in all forms. Not only does he instinctively select the flesh of animals; but he is encouraged in this choice by a belief in the strengthening qualities of animal food. What says Dr. Pavy on this topic, in his well-known Treatise on Food? "Many people look upon meat almost as though it formed the only food that really nourished and supplied what is wanted for work. The physician is constantly coming across an expression of this view. Undoubtedly a greater feeling of satiety is produced by meat than other food." The sense of satiety, and the fact that the said meat does digest in the stomach without giving rise to dyspeptic sensations, have beguiled many a man; ay! and woman too, down a primrose path leading to destruction. After that meat has been digested, there is its his tory within the body; and its ultimate excretion. This brings up another

grave matter.

We all know, or think we know, or

ought to know, that the flesh of animals is the great source of gout-poison; in other words, uric acid." In the bird and reptile we find the primitive urine to consist of uric acid. Insoluble uric acid is the form of nitrogenized excretion in animals with a solid urine. When Mammalia appear, we find a fluid urine; and the form of nitrogenous excretion the soluble urea. Still, even in the highest mammals, the Bimana themselves, we find traces of the primitive uric acid; and that, too, in the healthiest of us. When the liver is overtaxed by having to deal with excessive quantities of albumenoid matters, especially as animal food, in its overwork it reverts to the primitive uric acid formation. "Rich man's gout" and "poor man's gout" alike are liver-reversions; the one set up by persistent indulgence to excess in animal food, the other from liver incapacity. The town dweller, after a meat breakfast, goes to his counting house, or office, with its high temperature and its rebreathed air; and no wonder if his liver reverts to the uric acid formation of the antediluvian Ichthyosaurus in his tropical swamp.

We see digestive incapacity has led to the adoption of an erroneous and injurious dietary by the town dweller; which, in its turn, gives rise to the liver-reversion to the uric acid formation. We recognize the different links in the morbid chain, one following after another. The disturbance of the nutritive balance by precocity, has starved the digestive organs. Indigestion has started an undesirable dietary; and excess of nitrogenized waste has led to the reversion of the liver to the early primitive uric acid formation. This, in its turn, entails a long series of morbid sequences. Uric acid accumulates in the form of urates; which, when they are not caşt out in sufficient quantity, remain in the body as gout. When they are cast out by the kidneys, these organs are injured by their output. Constructed to excrete the soluble urea, the presence in excess of the insoluble uric acid irritates their structures, and sets up interstitial nephritis, or, in other words, "chronic Bright's disease.' Frequently, more. or less of both are found together in varying proportions. Changes in bloodvessel and kidney are the result of a

blood surcharged with nitrogenized waste of insoluble character. Gout and Bright's disease are the offspring-the son and daughter-and often the twin progeny of the great vaso-renal" change which is set up by reversion to the uric acid formation. Both maladies have existed in the past, even before the dawn of history, no doubt; but I am strictly within the limits of the truth when I make the statement that this reversion to the uric acid formation is most prominently seen in town populations; which are themselves reverting to an earlier and lowlier ethnic form. It is the microcosm within the macrocosm; liver reversion in the midst of a greater and general somatic reversion.

If, then, the morbid change commonly known as "chronic Bright's disease, is the outcome of digestive incapacity, it is not the only malady which commences in failure of the digestion. The town-dweller too frequently shuns fat, and dies of consumption. We know only too well that fat is essential to healthy tissues. Sooner or later, the avoidance of fat leads to that dread disease, "pulmonary phthisis." If we can get the phthisical patient to take cod-liver oil, and assimilate it, then we know we can set a limit to the ravages of the disease, and stay its march.

Digestive impairment in town-dwellers gives us Bright's disease and phthisis, not rarely combined-the two scourges of town populations; or, in other words, these maladies are the means by which degenerate town populations are cut off-Dame Nature's way of weeding out urban communities; while their still more degenerate progeny-when they have any succumb to the diseases of childhood.

This is not a lively or a cheering picture I have just drawn as to the fate and destiny of town populations; but I am not responsible for the existence of the facts, thank Heaven! but merely for marshalling them in array and order of sequence. But if the stern reality exists, it behooves us to recognize it, and, what is still more, to grapple with it. We all admit the great necessity for

The matter of the part played by mental work and worry in the production of Bright's disease and diabetes cannot be considered here.

NEW SERIES.-VOL. XLVI., No. 6

of

education, which cannot be deferred till the period of growth is over. Schoollife and growth go together. And it is just the organism of the town-mite, with its imperfect digestive organs, which feels most acutely the pressure the School Board. Its already overtaxed system simply staggers under the added burden of its lessons. It is not that education should be neglected by any means. But surely some method could be adopted other than the present inelastic standards. To drive children en masse through certain examinations, is as irrational and injurious (especially to the weaker ones) as it would be to insist that they shall all run together, each carrying a given weight, over a measured course, in a fixed time-on the devil-take-the-hindermost principle. Education is a good thing: no one questions that. But a system of education which is injurious to the physique of the weaker children is not an unalloyed good. The present scheme may do no harm to robust country children; but it is far different with town children. And I can only express the hope that this aspect of the subject may attract the attention of persons interested in the education of children.

Quetelet, in his well-known treatise, On Man, pointed out that the growth of town children is quicker than that of country children. The demands upon the nutritive powers are larger and, consequently, we can understand how it comes about that the educational burden is felt more by town children than their country cousins. And, further, he showed that the growth is more rapid in girls than in boys. And, probably, the effects of education are felt more keenly by girls than boys. And in connection with this, there is a further matter than preliminary education which is now looming up, dark and grewsome, on the social horizon, and which must not be shirked; and that is the "higher education of women." Girls of the lower class escape from the grasp of the school-mistress at the age of thirteen. Not so, however, the girls of a higher social stratum. High schools for girls are now in vogue. But they, again, are not an unalloyed good. The sterner stuff may shine at Girton and Newnham; but how about the frailer crea

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tures? How come about those myriads of small, slight, petite women, of emotional temperament and feeble digestive capacity, we encounter on all sides; and especially on fashionable promenades? They are dwarfed organismsmediocrities in all measurements. They contrast with the stalwart "mothers of heroes" we still see in the country; those slim spinsters, whose doom it is to die unwed! They are the priestesses and patrons of the circulating library; and the modern novel; but these blighted women are but indifferent material for wife and mother.

Town life is not a natural life. If it has certain advantages, it also has sundry drawbacks. The imperfect development of the digestive organs has far-reaching consequences, as we have just seen. Knowledge must precede conduct. The realization of the fact that the digestive difficulties of towndwellers lead them to adopt a dietary which is injurious in its after results, will cause them to correct it. Already,

indeed, we see many blindly starting out on a new track in the spread of vegetarianism, along with the "Blue Ribbon." In this action they have not waited for physiology to pronounce an authoritative opinion; but have acted on their own account, guided by some instinctive impulse. Modifications in our food-customs are required for towndwellers. They should have food which will nourish them and sustain them, without any bad after effects; and which they can digest. Possibly, too, before long it will be found that some modification of the existing scheme of education is desirable in the interest of the weaker children. Possibly, too, it may be found that little town-mites expand when restored to the country, and can lead a more natural life than that to which, at present, they are condemned by the growth of large towns; which exercise such a malign influence upon those who dwell therein and especially those who are born and reared in such towns. -National Review.

CONCERNING MEN.

BY A WOMAN.

I HAVE been asked to write a paper giving a woman's opinions upon men; the reason urged for this request being "that a woman who has for the purposes of literary art analyzed the minds of men and women must have reached valuable conclusions as to the mutual limitations of each sex, and its supplementation by the other.'

It may be so. One cannot have written novels for forty years without much study and observation of human character, to say nothing of the inevitable experience which a long life brings. And yet I have hesitated. We all know ourselves better than outsiders do, and I am conscious of having lived, in a sense, out of the world-a quiet, happy domestic existence, which never brought me in contact with really bad men. Consequently, pessimistic or Zolaesque studies of them had no charm for me; and I have shared with many other female writers the accusation that all my men are" women's men," i.e., men, painted,

not as they are, but after the ideal—a woman's ideal of what they ought to be. Perhaps we might retort how very little men know of us, and how unlike to real women are the heroines of many male novelists. The difference seems to be, that a woman's man is generally gifted with impossible virtues, while a man's woman, if not enchantingly wicked, is often so tame and weak, even silly, like Thackeray's Amelia and a dozen more I could name, that the best of her sex would be ashamed to own her.

Be that as it may, I will not argue the question; I have been asked to say my say, and I say it, without dogmatism, but also without fear.

It is as well to premise, however, that all my observations and experience of life have confirmed me in one belief, viz., that while, as a rule, the average woman is superior to the average man, more estimable, lovable, nay, often more capable and reliable, there are ex

ceptional men nobler than any woman; for the simple reason that the masculine nature is larger and stronger, with wider possibilities for both evil and good. All thy passions, matched with mine, Are like moonlight unto sunlight and as water unto wine,

is a truth affirmed by a wise man, which should never be ignored in a woman's judgment of men.

Also, though we find continual exceptions-women as strong as many a man, and men tenderer than most womenstill the creed that "woman is the lesser man" does in the main hold good, in tellectually as well as physically. Morally, I doubt. In purity, single-mindedness, unselfishness, faithfulness, the ordinary man is distinctly below the ordinary woman. You would have but to look in, Asmodeus-like, upon any fifty households of your acquaintance, comparing the husbands with the wives, the brothers with the sisters, in their internal and domestic, not their outside society life, to be pretty sure that such is the case. But, as I shall presently show, this is mainly the women's fault.

It is better to bow before an unseen divinity than to adore the fish-bone fetish of a South Sea Islander; therefore, if I judge severely men as they are, it is because I have never swerved from my belief in what they are capable of, or my early ideal of what they ought to be. Much as has been said about the equality of the sexes, and great as is the indignation of some of us at being considered "the weaker sex,' I am afraid that absolute equality between men and women is impossible. Nature herself sets her face against it; and chiefly by the desire implanted in most women's breasts to look up, physically and mentally, to some one greater than them selves; unto whom they can cling, and on whom they can rely, without any sense of inferiority. Not merely to love but to worship, to make herself a mat for the man's feet to walk over, to believe everything he does and says is right, to be ready to live for him or die for him, and merge her own identity completely in his-this, I think, is the instinct of most women, or, at least, the noblest half of them. It is Nature; and Nature, we must allow, is occasionally right.

Nature, too, lays down limits beyond which women, in the aggregate, cannot pass. She means them to be not men, or rather imitation men, but the mothers of men. I am old-fashioned enough to believe that every girl's education, mental, moral, physical, ought to be primarily with a view to wifehood and motherhood, the highest and happiest destiny. to which any woman can attain. Even when Fate denies them this chiefest blessing-as, considering the large surplus female population in the world, must often be the case-she still leaves them the possibility of being the spiritual mothers of a new generation-as maiden aunts, Sisters in Orphanages, hospital nurses, and the like. While sufficient to themselves, able to do their own work in the world, solitary but strong-unmarried women may still keep up, as many an old maid does keep up, the natural maternal instinct; by helping all helpless creatures and becoming an ennobling influence to mankind in the aggregate, if not to the individual man.

This abstract mother-impulse, absent in the other sex-a man loves his own children, but seldom any other man'sis, I believe, the keynote of feminine nature, and has its roots in distinct psychological and physiological laws. Man is made of muscle and brains; by them he has to govern the world. His very selfishness, or, call it selfism, his hardness and masterfulness, are, in one sense, a necessity, else he would never be able to fight his way and protect those whom he is bound to protect. But woman's kingdom is the heart. A woman without tenderness, without gentleness, without the power of selfsuppression to an almost infinite degree, is a creature so anomalous that she cannot fail to do enormous harm, both to her own sex and to the other. She ceases to be the guardian angel she was meant to be, and becomes an angelfaced devil, working woe wherever she appears.

One often hears girls, and very good girls too, declaring that "they like men far better than women," and putting in mankind a sublime impossible trust, which if the other sex justified we should have no strong - minded" women. It is the reaction after loss,

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