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THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.

tal. The first loss can be made up, but the last, never! Boys and girls are put into an open boat and pushed out to sea; their chart, a basket full of facts that they have never assorted or applied; their arms too weak to use the oars, and if their boat is not swamped, they will drift on to an unknown shore, and must make their way as best they can. But give a boy a pair of strong arms, and the simplest chart of the waters he has to navigate, and he will make his way to some objective point and make a suc­cess of his life. In reading the lives of our great self-made men, merchants, minis­ters, professional men, I find this statement in every case: they had only a common- school education, but a vigorous, healthy constitution and uprightness of character; and usually this added: they had good mothers; and I would say to all mothers who regret their inability to send their sons to college, give the boys a healthy, vigorous body and good moral training and their chances of success in life will be greater than with a college education, lacking these. Goethe’s mother said she knew her son would be a great man, because she gave him so much of her young life, which she fol­lowed up with careful training,and her predictions were fulfilled. Her son was one of the greatest men of Germany. With all our improvements in science, in agriculture, and in many arts, we have left the human race to nature. But all persons who think know that we can leave nothing to nature, when we desire improvement. She shows us many examples of what can be done, but does not do the work for us. Everything that has life, or mind, or soul, left to nature, runs to weeds. We must work out our salvation, physically, mentally and morally. If you walk up the boulevards and through the parks of this city, you will see beautiful velvety lawns and bright flowers, and a street beyond you will see vacant lots filled with weeds; one is nature cultivated, the other nature uncultivated. Way up in New England you will find in the gardens, in autumn, a little, yellow blossom, prized because it is a late bloomer, and bright when everything else is going to decay; and last winter in New York I saw this same little chrysanthemum, developed into a hundred varieties of color and form, marvelously beautiful; one was nature cultivated, and the other nature uncultivated.

Last year we had a dog show in New York, and there were dogs there valued at Si0,000, each one having an attendant who understood dog culture; they were not left to nature; if they had been they would not have been worth ten thousand cents. When you look around you and see the possibilities of development in the animal and veg­etable kingdom, do you ever think of the wonderful possibilities of human develop­ment? I believe artists only have conceived this possibility of the body. Some few persons have attained to this possibility in mind and soul, but how very few have reached the harmonious development of the whole being, and these few have been our greatest men and women. But painters and poets and novelists have been trying to do for us physically what others have been trying to do for us spiritually, revealing to us the beauties of perfection, until we all aspire to it, but are only now beginning to find out the way. We now have systems of exercise that will develop a healthy and graceful body. We are beginning to understand that to produce a healthy body we must give it fresh air, exercise, wholesome and well cooked food, and I particularly emphasize the last, for it is one of the rare things in life. I would like to work and travel hand in hand with the cooking teacher, and I think if I could, and form a sort of crusade, there would be fewer doctors, fewer prisons, and fewer missionaries needed.

There seems to be a general idea that city children are more feeble than country children, but I have not found this to be true among the same class of people. The idea that the children of society ladies are neglected is incorrect; there is no class of children so well brought up physically; their diet, rest and exercise are prescribed, and they follow a perfect system of development, and are as thoroughbred as the horses in their father’s stable. The girls will be brought out into society, and their mothers would be ashamed to introduce sallow, misshapen young ladies, and therefore everything is done to make them as perfect, physically, as possible. The boys of many of the leading families will have the responsibility of large fortunes and large business