THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
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canvas the most beautiful conception of an inspired, artistic imagination. I have been led to consider this subject, because, while traveling through the length and breadth of the country, I have not only been pained by the undeveloped and deformed boys and girls, but I have heard the cry everywhere for more physical strength to do the work that has to be done. The pressure in all directions is a hundred-fold greater than it was fifty years ago, but the strength to meet it is not as great. So I am striving to awaken an interest in this work—the salvation of bodies —and, through the bodies, of the soul. We know that those things that degrade the body—intemperance, immorality, etc., likewise degrade the soul, and, as truly those things that elevate, strengthen and purify the body, must have a like influence on the soul. By the soul I do not mean the spiritual part of the being, but that part that we elevate and build in this world—the seat of order, affection, character and all the virtues, the part into which was breathed the breath of life, and out of which must grow the immortal; but the seed here planted, unless nourished by sunshine and proper food, can not grow, and must perish. As the body is the soil in which the brain and soul live, and which could exist without either, but neither of these can exist without the body. Therefore I say the body should receive the first attention. It is the foundation on which we must build. YVhat would you think of an architect w T ho built a beautiful palace, and before he had finished the interior decorations he found it was settling, because he had paid no attention to the foundation, and when it should have stood completed in its beauty it w r as only a heap of ruins?
When the cathedrals of Europe w 7 ere built the greatest artists and architects in the world were sought, first to design and build them strong enough to last through the ages, and then to decorate them; and when they were then built as strong and as beautiful as human skill could make them, they were consecrated. They did not consecrate a heap of stones. So should we build, and decorate with soul and mind, our temple.
A friend of mine who was getting up a class in painting in one of the New England villages, visited almost every house, and she told me she had not visited a house where the woman or her daughters were not “ailing.” Think ofthat in New England, where there is the purest water, and where the people should be as healthy and rugged as the peasants of Europe. I visited a friend, a handsome and well-developed woman, and was introduced to her two daughters—girls twelve and fourteen years old— and when they came into the room I should not have been any more shocked if they had come in dressed in rags and dirty; they would not have shown any more neglect. They were thin, sallow, round-shouldered, had bad teeth and weak eyes, and were very nervous. When I saw the way they lived I did not w 7 onder, for no attention was paid to diet, exercise or rest. I believe the time will come, as it has in some of our cities, when any mother will be as much ashamed to present such children as she now is to present them in rags. If the same time and care could be given to the bodies as is given to the clothing of the bodies, I think the result would be more satisfactory. It is just as easy to predict what will be the future of hundreds of half-starved, delicate children in w 7 ell-to-do families as it would be to predict what must be the future of a crop of wheat sown in the sand along our ocean or lake shore; and if you saw a man sowing a crop there you w 7 ould think he was crazy or a fool if he expected it to grow and mature there, or be worth gathering if it did come up. Almost every one would be able to tell him the reason why. You understand these things in regard to the vegetable or animal kingdom, but fail to understand them in the human being, and there is no excuse for such ignorance and indifference in these days of cheap books and intelligent magazine articles.
What would you think of a guardian who had the keeping of the fortune of a child, the money to be handed over when the child is of age, but who spends the money for himself, and thus defrauds the child? You would call him a criminal, and punish him by law; but I say his neglect is not as criminal as the neglect that defrauds the child of health, and starts him off in life with no moral or physical capi-