Miss Rose had lost all the elastic bound in her manner of walking, all the hearty ring in her laugh, all the color in her face, all the shine of her eyes, all her power of diffusing joy about her.
There are other experiments of a similar kind in progress, and persons who are interested in this sort of scientific observation, will, by calling at their next door neighbor's, find very interesting opportunities to prosecute such studies.
Shade-trees, piazzas, blinds, curtains, carriage-tops and parasols produce weak eyes, weak nerves, weak digestion, weak spines, weak muscles, weak volition, and, in brief, weak women.
As argued in my recent work, "Talks about People's Stomachs," the function of digestion is powerfully affected by the light.
Place the richest earth and plenty of water about a potato-vine in the cellar; it can't digest its food, and must remain pale and weak.
Go up stairs into the drawing-room, and you will find girls, (excuse me, I mean young ladies,) who look so exactly like the potato-vine in the cellar, that you are not at all surprised to find them under the same roof, for they are clearly members of the same family,— the anti-solar family.
The next system of treatment for invalids will be the "Sun-Cure." Institutions will be established, to which patients will flock for the cure of chronic maladies. Affections of the stomach and liver, will, by the "Sun-Cure," be relieved almost as if by a miracle. One, two or three hours a day, patients will be exposed nude, to the sun, either in part,—for example, the abdomen or back, or over the entire person, when the fault is one of digestion and assimilation. Young ladies in the matrimonial market, who are such ghosts that the men shudder and run away front them, will spend three months in one of these institutions, and return as brown and sweet as their admirers could wish. In the coming "sun-cure," diseases which are now regarded as well-nigh incurable, for example, some forms of neuralgia, will be quickly relieved.
Whether the banks pay specie or not, whether trade flourishes or languishes, whatever may be our success or failure in life, let us keep wide open the flood-gates of life; let us be true children of the sun, worshipping, not with prostrate forms, but, standing upright in the image of God, express our gratitude by baptismal evolutions in the all-glorious light.
A WORD ABOUT BATHS.
My dear girls, I want to speak to you very plainly about baths.