But our Young Folks are weak.
Your weakness is in your bodies. Here lies your danger. I see nothing which distresses me so much as the physique of the children in our public schools. Great heads, beautiful faces, brilliant eyes; but with that attenuated neck, thin, flat chest, and languid gait. Look at these two boys, John and Thomas. John is a native Yankee. I found him, without long searching, in one of our public schools. Thomas is an imaginary boy, composed by the artist.
Fig. 1 John. Fig. 2 Thomas.
Causes of John’s Deformity.
He has lain several hours every night in the position seen in Fig. 3. Much of that ugly pushing forward of the head among girls is produced by thick pillows.
Fig. 3
Young people should sleep on hair pillows two inches thick. Ambitious girls and boys throw the pillow aside. This is the other extreme, and wrong. It is unhealthy to lie constantly on the back. You must frequently change to the side. But when you turn upon the side, if you have no pillow, you must either twist the shoulders into a mischievous attitude, or let the head fall down to the level of the shoulder, as seen in Fig. 4. This disturbs the circulation in the neck.
Fig. 4
False Positions while sitting.
Another cause of the bad shape of John’s spine we find in his bad positions while sitting. Fig. 5 represents the position in which he should sit. You observe his feet rest on the floor. His hips are against the back of the chair. His spine is erect. In this position he may sit two hours without fatigue, provided the chair be a good one. About chairs I shall presently say something.
Fig. 5
Fig. 6
Fig. 6 shows a position in which I often see John. Do you observe how, with his legs crossed, he must push forward on the seat? The small of the back is no longer supported. The strain will soon produce weakness and pain.
Fig. 7 represents a still worse position. The strain upon the small of the back must not only produce weakness there, but must soon incline the spine to bend backward, while its natural shape at that point is a beautiful curve forward.
Writers on manners say the positions seen in Figs. 6 and 7 are vulgar. In this case, as in most others, propriety and physiology are in harmony.
Positions in School.
Fig. 8 shows a bad posture. Sitting thus three hours a day must soon produce round shoulders. Various devices have been proposed to help the pupil out of this difficulty. Our booksellers furnish a simple rack, which is shown in Fig. 9. It holds one or two books. In Fig. 10 two books are seen resting upon it. Fig. 11 shows the position of the pupil while using the book-rack. An eminent professor in a New-England college said to the assembled students, the other day, “This book-holder will add years to a literary man’s life.”
Fig. 7
Fig. 8
Chairs.
I promised a word about chairs. Our manufacturers do not consider health in designing the shape of chairs. The seats are too high, and too nearly horizontal. Boys and girls occupy seats seventeen inches high. A girl twelve years old should have a chair with the seat not more than twelve inches high. For a man even, it should not be more than fifteen or sixteen inches. (These dimensions apply to the front of the seat.) The back part should be at least two inches lower. With this inclination, the sitter will slide backward, against the back of the chair, instead of sliding forward, as he generally does. This sliding forward produces a strain upon the small of the back, and is, in fact, the cause of most of the fatigue in sitting. The width of the chair-seat from front to back should be the same as the height in front.
Fig. 9
Fig. 10
The chair-back should project farthest forward at that point which corresponds to the small of the back. Instead of this, there is generally at that point a hollow. This error is the cause of much pain and weakness in the lower part of the spine.
Fig. 12 shows an unphysiological chair. It is a fashionable parlor-chair. Fig. 13 is a physiological chair. Two hours in this will fatigue less than half an hour in that.
Fig. 11
Fig. 12
Fig. 13
Walking.
Americans are bad walkers. It is rare to find an exception, even in our army. Among Europeans, and the aborigines of our own continent, a noble mien is not uncommon. I understand the causes of this ugly defect, among our people, but my present purpose is simply to call attention to it, and to point out the remedy.
In English and French books on the military drill and physical training, whole chapters discuss the subject of walking. We are told that this or that part of the foot must touch the ground first, — that the angles must be so and so, &c., &c. I will not say this advice is not right, but I will say that very few have been helped by it.
Look at a good walker. Shoulders, head, and hips drawn well back, and the chest thrown forward. What a firm, vigorous tread! Such a walk may easily be secured by carrying a weight upon the head. An iron crown has been devised for this purpose. It consists of three crowns, one within the other, each weighing about nine pounds. One or all three may be worn at a time.
The water-carriers of Southern Europe, although belonging to the lowest class, have a noble bearing. Certain negroes in the South, who “tote” burdens upon the head as a business, can be readily pointed out in a crowd. The effort required to keep the burden directly over the spine so develops the muscles of the back and neck, that in the absence of the burden the head is carried in a noble, erect attitude.
By carrying one of these crowns upon the head half an hour two or three times a day, while walking in the garden or through the halls of the house, one may soon become a fine walker. One tenth of the time occupied in learning a few tunes on the piano, given to this exercise, would insure any girl a noble carriage. The crown is not necessary. Any weight which does not press upon the very crown of the head, but about it, will answer the purpose equally well.
Fig. 14 exhibits John as the photographer took him the first time he wore the crown. You observe how his form is changed.
False Positions while walking, in Schools.
Fig. 15 shows the worst of them. This is no exaggeration of what I have seen in our New-England schools. It is not common among scholars to join the hands thus, and carry the body erect. Fig. 16 shows a still worse position. If you stand erect, with your arms hanging by the sides, and then deliberately fold the arms, as in this figure, you will find the points of the shoulders are drawn forward two inches, and the chest much contracted. Experiments prove that the amount of air which the lungs can inhale is reduced fifteen to eighteen per cent when the arms are thus folded.
Fig. 17 secures a good position of the spine, and opens the chest. Fig. 18 is not very seemly, but, practised five minutes two or three times a day, would do much to develop the muscles of the spine, and particularly those of the back of the neck, whose weakness permits the head to droop. This subject I commend to teachers and school-committees.
Fig. 14 Fig. 15 Fig. 16
Fig. 17 Fig. 18
The Muff.
It draws the shoulders forward, and produces an ugly gait. Let a boy wear a shawl, and hold it together in front with his hands, and he will have the same disagreeable waddle. If he wears it even for one winter, he will learn to stoop. Muffs, shawls, and those cloaks which do not allow the arms to swing freely, should all be thrown overboard. Over-coats should be worn by both sexes.
The arms are almost as necessary in walking as the legs. The first time you are walking with your arms at liberty, stop moving them and hold them by your sides. You will be surprised to find how soon your companion will leave you behind, although you may hurry, twist, wriggle, and try very hard to keep up. One reason for the slow walk among girls is to be found in this practice of carrying the arms motionless. Three miles an hour with the arms still, is as hard work as four miles with the arms free.
I have seen the queens of the stage walk. I have seen a few girls and women of queenly bearing walk in the street and drawing-room. They move
d their arms in a free and graceful manner. Could this habit become universal among girls, their chests would enlarge and their bearing be greatly improved. See that girl walking with both hands in her muff. How she wriggles and twists her shoulders and hips! This is because her arms are pinioned. Give them free swing, and her gait would soon become more graceful.
You have seen pictures of our muscles. Those of the upper part of the body, you remember, spread out from the shoulder, in all directions, like a fan. Now if you hold the shoulder still, the muscles of the chest will shrink, the shoulders stoop, and the whole chest become thin and ugly.
But some girls will say, “Swinging the arms must be very slight exercise.” True, it is very slight, if you swing the arms but once or ten times, but if you swing them ten thousand times in a day, you will obtain more exercise of the muscles of the chest than by all other ordinary movements combined. Indeed, if I were asked what exercise I thought most effective for developing the chests of American girls, I should reply at once, swinging the arms while walking.
Dio Lewis.
ANDY’S ADVENTURES; OR THE WORLD BEWITCHED.
Andy’s folks had gone to town, and left him at home to take care of the house, watch the garden, and amuse himself.
Andy had a new bow and arrow, and he thought it would be great sport to have nothing to do all the afternoon but to shoot at the robins and woodpeckers.
So, as soon as the wagon was out of sight, and the gate shut, he ran into the orchard, and began the fun. He kept near enough to the house to see if anybody came to the door, and near enough to the garden to see if the pigs got into it; and whenever he saw a bird, he sent an arrow after it. But the robins soon found out what he wanted, and flew away when they saw him coming. Their beautiful red breasts would have been capital marks, if they had only waited for him to get a good shot. The wrens were not afraid, but they were so small he could not hit them. And the swallows kept flying about so, twittering and darting here and there, that he knew he would have to practise a long time before he could take them on the wing. The yellow-birds and blue-birds were so shy, that he could hardly see one in sight of the house. So there was no game left but the woodpeckers.
But woodpeckers are cunning fellows. They run up the trees, and stick in their bills, and hop about, and fly from one tree to another so fast, that it takes a pretty smart boy to hit one. They were tame enough, and would sometimes let Andy come quite near; they would stop pecking a moment, and hold up their red heads to take a good look at him; then they would begin to drum again in the merriest way, making little holes in the old peach-trees, which began to look like wooden soldiers that had gone through the wars and been shot in hundreds of places. But the instant Andy drew the bowstring and took aim, they knew well enough what it meant; and it was provoking to see them dodge around on the bark and get out of sight just in time to let the arrow whiz by them. Then they would go to pecking and drumming again so near, that he wished a dozen times that he had some kind of an arrow that would shoot around a tree and hit on the other side.
At length Andy grew tired of this fun; and he had lost his arrow so many times in the grass, and had to hunt for it, that he got vexed, and thought it would be much better sport to go and shoot a chicken.
Now he did not mean to kill a chicken, and he did not really think he would be able to hit one. But often we do things more easily when we are not trying very hard, than when we are too anxious. So it happened with Andy. He tried his luck on the speckled top-knot, which everybody considered the handsomest chick that had been hatched that summer. He drew his bow, let go the string, and the speckled top-knot keeled over. He ran up to it, very proud, at first, of his good shot, but frightened enough when he found that the chicken only just kicked a little, and then lay quite still.
Andy turned it over, and tried to stand it upon its legs, and thought what he should tell his parents.
“I’ll say a hawk flew down and killed it! But I shot at the hawk, and he let it drop, just as he was flying away with it.”
This was the story he made up, as he took poor top-knot and laid it down by the well-curb.
He was still wishing to shoot something that was alive, and, seeing the cat creeping along on the fence watching for a mouse, he concluded to try his luck with her. So he drew up, aimed, and fired. Puss was so intent on watching the mouse that she paid no attention at all to the arrow, which struck the rail a little behind her, and glanced off towards the house. Andy heard a sound like shivered glass, and, running up, saw to his dismay that he had broken a window.
Now he had been told never to shoot his arrow towards the house; and how to conceal the accident and avoid punishment he couldn’t at first imagine. The glass lay scattered on the pantry shelf, and the hole in the pane was large enough to put his hand through.
“I’ll say Joe Beals came and wanted my bow, and because I wouldn’t let him have it, he threw a stone at me, and broke the window.”
And having made up this story, he searched for such a stone as Joe would be apt to throw, and, having found one, placed it on the pantry floor, to appear as if it had fallen there after passing through the glass.
These accidents made him dislike his bow, and he hung it up in the wood-shed. Then he made a lasso of a string, and caught the cat by throwing the noose over her head. But Puss did not like the sport as well as he did, and gave him such a scratch that he was glad to let her run off with the lasso. Then he thought he would plague the old sow by getting one of her little pink-white pigs; but the instant he had caught it up in his arms, it began to squeal; and the mother, hearing it, ran after him with such a frightful noise, throwing up her great, savage tusks at him, that he dropped it, and ran for his life. She stopped to smell of Piggy, and see if it was hurt; and so he got away, though he was terribly frightened.
Then Andy thought of his toy ship; and having stopped the holes in the sink, and pumped it full of water, he called it his ocean, and launched the “Sea-bird.” With a pair of bellows he made wind, and with a dipper he made waves; and by placing a kettle bottom upwards in the middle of the sink he made an island; and the good ship pitched, and tossed, and rolled in a very exciting manner. At length he resolved to have a shipwreck. This he managed, not by putting the ship on a rock, but by putting a rock on the ship. He used for the purpose the stone Joe Beals did not throw through the pantry window, and the “Sea-bird” went down, with all her crew on board. He then opened the holes in the sink, and the tide, going out, left the vessel on her beam-ends, stranded.
It would have been well for Andy if he had been contented with such innocent pastimes, without doing mischief to the cat, or chickens, or pigs, or trying to shoot the pretty birds that fly about the orchards, singing so sweetly, and eating the worms that destroy the trees.
But nothing satisfied him; and to have some better fun than any yet, he determined to stand in the door and scream, “Fire!” He could not imagine greater sport than to see the neighbors come running to put out the fire, and then laugh at them for being duped. He did not consider that they would have to leave their work, and run a long distance, till they were quite out of breath; or that his laughter would be a very mean and foolish return for the good-will they would show in hastening to save his father’s house; or that, in case the house should really take fire some day, and he should call for help, people might think it another silly trick, and stay away.
He stood in the door, filled his lungs with a long breath, opened his mouth as wide as he could, and screamed,—”Fire! fire! fire!”
Three times. He thought it so funny, that he had to stop and laugh. Then he took another breath, and screamed again, louder than before,—”Fire! fire! fire! fire! fire!”
Five times; and he heard the echoes away off among the hills; and, looking across the lot, he saw old Mother Quirk hobbling on her crutch.
Old Mother Quirk was just about the queerest woman in the world. She had a nose as crooked as a horn, and almost as long. It crooked down to meet her ch
in, and her chin crooked up to meet her nose. And some people said she could hold the end of a thread between them, when she wished to twist a cord with both hands, — although I doubt it. Her face was so full of wrinkles, that the smallest spot you could think of had at least twenty in it. Her eyes were as black as charcoal, and as bright as diamonds. She was very old; and her back was bent like a bow; and her hair was perfectly white, and as long and fine as the finest kind of flax; and she was so lame that she could never walk without her crutch.
She was a good woman though, people said, and knew almost everything. She could tell when it would rain to-morrow, and when it would be fair. She would shut her eyes, and tell you all about your friends at a distance; describe them as plainly as if she saw them, and inform you if anything pleasant or unpleasant had happened to them. She knew more about curing the sick than the doctors did; and once when Andy had hurt his foot by jumping upon a sharp stub, and it was so sore for a week that he could not step, and it had been poulticed and plastered till it was as white and soft as cheese-curd, Mother Quirk had cured it in three days, by putting on to it a bit of dried beef’s gall, which drew out a sliver that the doctors had never thought of. She was always ready to help people who were in trouble; and now, when Andy screamed fire, she was the first to come hobbling on her crutch.
“What is burning, Andy?” she cried, as she came through the gate. “Where is the fire?”
“In the bottom of the well!” replied Andy, laughing till his side ached. “O, ho, ho! why don’t you bring some water in a thimble, and put the well out? O, ho, ho! Mother Quirk!”
There was fire in the old woman’s eyes just then, if not in the well. It flashed out of them like two little streams of lightning out of two little jet-black clouds. She lifted her crutch, and I am not sure but she would have struck Andy with it, if she had not been too lame to catch him.
Complete Works of Harriet Beecher Stowe Page 645