The first condition of a free and continuous flow of blood is a healthy heart, not hampered by irritants, mental or physical. Sudden grief or fright produces cold by arresting the circulation, and the flow may be permanently retarded by anxiety. The mind has a wondrously direct influence on the heart and blood-vessels—on the latter through the nerves, which increase or reduce the calibre of the minute arteries, as in blushing or blanching at a thought. Instead of loading the body with clothes, the “chilly” should search out the physical cause of their coldness. The blood must not only circulate freely; it must be rich in nourishing materials, and not charged with poison. An excess of any one element may destroy the value of the whole. It is too much the habit of valetudinarians and unhealthy people of all kinds, to charge the blood with substances supposed to be “heating” or “cooling” as they think the system requires them. This is a mistake. The body does not need to be pampered with cordials, or refrigerated with cunningly devised potions. If it be well nourished it will be healthy.
There is something fearful in seeing a man of high character being under an obligation to a fool.—Goethe.
SKATING AND SKATERS.
By ROBERT MACGREGOR.
Though it appears to be impossible to fix on the time when skating first took root in this country, there can be no doubt that it was introduced to us from more northern climates, where it originated more from the necessities of the inhabitants than as a pastime. When snow covered their land, and ice bound up their rivers, imperious necessity would soon suggest to the Scands or the Germans some ready means of winter locomotion. This first took the form of snow-shoes, with two long runners of wood, like those still used by the inhabitants of the northerly parts of Norway and Sweden in their journeys over the immense snowfields.
When used on ice, one runner would soon have been found more convenient than the widely-separated two, and harder materials used than wood; first bone was substituted; then it, in turn, gave place to iron; and thus the present form of skate was developed in the North at a period set down by Scandinavian archæologists as about A. D. 200.