| Share page |
|
HEALTH EXERCISES |
455 |
||
|
cannot comfortably go the distance, even at this slow gait, he must drop out when he feels like it. Next day at recess let them do it again. Those who dropped out will go farther each day for the first week, and the second week once around the block will be enough.
Fast Running
After a few weeks, running will be so easy that they will laugh at it. Then they can add to the distance each week till they are doing a mile daily. To a strong boy, over ten years of age, this is no work. In hare and hounds, boys not much older often run from five to eight miles at a stretch. And any vigorous boy should be able to skate all afternoon without harm.
Training for Girls
What is there here not equally true as to girls? Who is apt to get on better anywhere in life: a girl, pale and weak, who tires easily; who has never developed body or limb; whose small feeble lungs, feeble voice, listless walk, and general air of helplessness at once tell all who see her that she is weak; and that unless she mends her way she is sure to go through life a care and a burden to others, and of little or no real help to any one? Or a girl with every muscle gracefully developed, with head well set upon a shapely neck, with high, superb chest, erect, lissome, step springy and elastic, a good runner, swimmer, skater, dancer, golfer, tennis player, sailor, fencer, or a skilled and nervy horsewoman, a splendid walker; her clear bright eyes, exquisite complexion, sunny air, trained mind, and strong, high character combining to give her a face attractive, perhaps radiant with beauty; and an atmosphere so helpful and wholesome, that somehow she wins and owns all hearts? It is easy to answer.
Nearly every one of the things that she does not like, she can cure; and those that she does like, she can have, if she will use the means to get them. We have been seeing how boys can get many of them. And the same, or like ways, will build up the girls just as readily. With all our boys and girls at last |
|||