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women,

THE HYGEINE OF STUDY.

A SCHOOLMASTER'S LECTURE TO THE SENIOR CLASS.

WISH to speak to you, not as to children, but as to young men and earnest and fair-minded. It is an awful moment when you are called upon to decide whether you will choose or not to subordinate the passions of your body and the impulses of your better nature to that intelligence which is your highest endowment. I believe the moment in which most of you will make that choice is near at hand. Bear with me, if in my opening lecture, I dwell for a moment upon the theme. May I not help you to a Or have you already learned for yourselves the knack of forming a judgment? Have you acquired the habit of challenging every opinion that you find lurking in your consciousness, and compelling it to show cause why it should not be cast aside at once? To be direct, do you yet know your own minds? Have you thought out the principles that are to shape your course in life; or are you still intellectual babes, taking your judgments like pap from whatever hand chances to hold the spoon?

Perhaps I may safely assume that you have already thought of life and the future, and that you have decided to choose what is best in life, and, in the training of your own persons, to hold the lowest functions in the lowest estimation.

Having chosen to do this, you are met at once with the question,-How? And it is on the answer to this question, How, that all depends. Plenty of warm and earnest young men and women start upon the race of life fully intending to quit themselves nobly to the end, who yet fall miserably short of the goal they might have reached - all from not knowing how to run. A score of you here to-day! To some of you, nature has given large, active, fruitful minds while to others she has not been so bountiful; yet I say and I speak with full deliberation—I declare that it is in the power of every one of you to reach a position among the mightiest and the noblest in the land. So enormous is the waste of power that is going on all around, you have only to learn the art of living well, and you will outstrip ninety-nine out of one hundred of your companions. I am not directing your thoughts to any public career; though I hope you may all have that strength of character which will at once keep you from craving publicity, and yet will impel you to extend your influence in ever-widening circles of goodness and beauty.

But, you ask, is the extensive culture to which I am directing your attention, worth while for you, who expect to spend your days in the counting-room or the household is it worth the trouble it will cost? A fair question, certainly. My answer is, the best is the cheapest. The best way from this cradle to yonder tomb-stone, and what lies beyond, is, considering all things, the easiest way. The great secret which the wise man has mastered is this: what looks

hard and painful to those who would like to be virtuous and dare not, is to the courageous easy and pleasant. I do not doubt that John Brown stepped into the gallows-cart on that frosty morning of December, bearing in his breast the lightest, most joyous heart in all Virginia.

Thoreau says: "Goodness is the only investment that never fails." Remember this. Remember, too, that obedience to the requirements of the decalogue does not give us the sum of all goodness. We may invest the quality of goodness in every affair of life, and be certain that is a safe investment; but we must be judicious: we must have no false standard of goodness. Your dress should be good: good for what? Good to protect your body, to please your taste moderately, and especially to leave the mind free from any obtrusive thoughts about dress. If you make it good beyond this, it is not good. The dandy, who, in the course of years, achieved that immaculate tie for his cravat, by "giving his whole mind to it," as he expressed it, can hardly be said to have invested his scanty portion of intellect in goodness; for even he should have known that his "whole mind" could have been made to produce something much nobler and more beautiful than any neck-tie. Now, having made up our minds that we will constantly study to gain what is noblest; we are concerned with the hygeine, or the healthful conduct of this study. We shall find that we have taken the first great step in the hygeine of study, when we shall have accustomed ourselves to the idea that all our faculties are of use, but that the lower are always to be subject and subordinate and, if need be, sacrificed to the higher. You will not give your whole mind to the tying of a dicky, or the making of money, or the pursuit of honors; for that would be sacrificing the high to the low. On the other hand, you will not give yourself wholly to science, neglecting altogether the body which must supply and protect your brain; nor the moral faculties which bind you in fellowship with men, and lift you into companionship with God.

In short, you will cultivate and preserve the whole man, for the sake of the commanding intellect, and the not less commanding affections which mark the mens sana in corpore sano:— sound mind in a healthy body.

The first requisite for good study is a good body. The corpus sanum must be kept garnished for the mens sana. The mistake which you are apt to fall into when you set about what is called physical culture, lies in making bodily health an end, instead of a means, of growth. Don't forget that the body is a casket. It is well to have a good casket for so precious a soul as yours; but to have a splendid casket- empty! that is pitiful.

It is often said that application to study is dangerous to health; but this is an error. Excessive application is injurious, of course; but so is immoderate application to beef-steak injurious. Literary men and women, as a class, are long-lived; and since they have begun to pay some attention to the systematic study of physiology and the laws of health, we may expect to see them retain their powers still later in life. It may be remarked, too, that in

the late war, regiments and companies made up of clerks, merchants, and studious men from the city, were able to endure the exposure and fatigue of army life better than the regiments of sturdy farmers that occupied the neighboring bivouacs. This was simply because the men who had been wont to use their heads in getting a livelihood, were able to understand and ward off the perils of their new mode of living more readily than the stouter men, who had been used to working in the open air, without being compelled to keep their wits at work. You may understand, then, that although a fine organization is more easily disordered than one more grossly made; yet, there comes with the finer organization a finer intelligence, which is able to circumvent and elude perils to which the gross man could only oppose the brute force of his body.

The keeping of a healthy body is a simple matter, if you will but give your attention to it.

Take care never to use up in a day anything more than the surplus strength of your body.

You begin the morning with a certain amount of surplus force that you may properly expend. But take note, that you cannot get your cake and keep your penny too. If you spend the day's force on walking, you can't have it for study. If you lay it all out in study, you can't have it for digesting the food that is to supply to-morrow's working force.

You will readily see the importance of learning to calculate your strength in order to dispose your forces to the best advantage. You must vary the mode of your life. Some days you will wish to read and think pretty hard. Then, you must eat sparingly, and only the simplest food; and your exercise must be of the most moderate kind. You must be warmly clad, so that no part of your strength may be used up in resisting the cold from outside.

You will, perhaps, be obliged to warm your feet quite often, so selfish is the brain in using up the blood from all parts of the body. In short, you must do nothing when you are at hard brain-work that will draw off the forces of the body from the brain. Laughter is generally a most healthgiving tonic; yet celebrated orator told me the other day that he should - that is, indulge in boisterous merrimentjust before going upon the platform to speak; for the reason that every bit of his strength was needed for the speech.

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But you cannot suffer the brain to appropriate to itself your bodily strength for any great length of time, Presently you must stop thinking; take a more generous allowance of food; amuse yourself quietly till it is pretty well digested; then rush into the open air, and, by exercise, provoke the muscles and tissues to take for themselves the first richness of the new blood that you

have been making.

You may set youself down as an expert when you find that you can use up all your time without using up yourself. The ill-constructed man wastes a

He does not know how

great deal of time-dawdles. He cannot help this. to rest one set of organs while he is using another set. If you find yourself listless, disinclined to exertion, unable to read, with a dull pain about your temples, and a general feeling of discontent and worthlessness settling over you, you may know that you have overlooked or neglected some requirement of hygeine; and I think you will find it best to wait quietly and patiently as possible, till you can relish a little food, then a little exercise, then more food and more exercise, and so on till your brain feels like work again. This waiting, however, is wasteful. One who understands the art of living has no time for lassitude and good-for-nothing-ness, as Charles Lamb says. He knows his business all the time, and attends to it with a sort of joyous punctuality. If his business for the moment is to take food, he leaves other business and attends to this, taking plenty of time for the eating and digesting, and banishing all labor and irksome thoughts. Is bodily exercise the business? He throws his whole being into it with hilarity and good temper. So, when his business is sleep, he attends to it with the same thoroughness: he comes to it regularly, with body and mind just comfortably tired never exhausted

with no late supper to digest, and no badly-managed business to worry about-and so falls quietly asleep and wastes no strength in horrid dreams or jousts with the bed-clothing. And when the hour comes for that intellectual work, for which everything else is merely a preparation, he finds exquisite, unspeakable enjoyment in the marvellous workings of a well-fed and well. managed brain. He encounters difficulties with the same hilarious delight feel as you spring from rock to rock up the bed of a mountain trout

that you

stream.

Direct the energies of your life to the pursuit of pleasure in any form, the attainment of wealth, or the gratification of passion, and you will find that as soon as you have clutched the object of your desire, the charm begins to wane. But if you regard all occupations and all pleasures as instruments for shaping out the possible beauty and nobility that is in you, they — and all things will have a perennial charm.

"A thing of beauty is a joy forever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never

Pass into nothingness; but still will keep

A bower quiet for us, and a sleep

Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing."

If we will it so, your soul-and mine-may be "a thing of beauty, a joy forever."

I hope it is not some mischief-loving sprite that is playing with my fancy this morning; for methinks I see each of you going forth from this day on ward; cheerfully bearing the mishaps of the day; wisely using the strength that God has given; performing the meanest duties with a noble grace, as of one whose soul is in communion with the Highest; still seeking some better

way; never thinking to "finish the education" until in good time the mortal shall put on immortality.

Carlyle says of Goethe:

"In no line does he speak with asperity of any man, scarcely of any thing. He knows the good, and loves it; he knows the bad and hateful, and rejects; but in neither case with violence. His love is calm and active; his rejection

implied rather than pronounced."

EDWARD S. BUNKER.

IT

RELIGION OR REASON.

T is a fact-hardly to be called strange, perhaps—that while Christians consider upon the religions of past ages and discuss their merits with perfect equanimity, the thought never seems to occur to them, that at some future day other generations will look back upon the Christian religion, as it now exists in its varied forms, and will speak of the blindness and ignorance of that race of men who knew no better how to worship God than to adhere to a prescribed formula, varied slightly by different sects, but substantially the same, which is throughout alike inconsonant with the general teachings of nature, and incompatible with the highest idea of manhood and Godhead.

It is marvelous to think that so large a proportion of sentient mankind should consent to hinge their faith in God and immortality on a written book or testimony; still more marvelous that they should take this testimony as a rule of life, and shape themselves in accordance with its dictation, in the most implicit faith. Old and young, Jew and gentile, Christian and Mohammedan, religionists of all classes, resting their faith on written records handed. down from generation to generation; spending precious moments of time in trying to prove the authenticity of their parchments,-a most hopeless task, one would think, from the innumerable volumes that have been written, and equally thankless, for what good purpose would be served in the event of one or the other being substantiated, since the present is the only real, and an allegory, if it be a good one, may serve as well to teach us an important truth as the best authenticated history? And then, apart from this, the stories related are, in many cases, whether they be true or false, such as could in no wise serve any good purpose in the education or betterment of mankind; and in our own Bible many of them are even offensive to a pure nature, and well calculated to perplex and bewilder an honest searcher after the truth who may have been referred to its pages.

Among the Liberal Christians, so-called, the latest outgrowth of Christianity, the same fundamental error exists. The Bible is the source from which their ministers derive their inspirations, and the choice offered you is merely

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