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Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1634, 28 December 1912, Page 11

riea a big etiok, and would carry ono in London if it were allowed. - , "She avoids the wearing of gloves, and looks, for ward, to tlio time when it shall be. quite correct for all of us, from 'June fo November, to walk bareheaded. In ■town she has spells of laziness, for .she' Bays that she -cannot' get" any.'exercise worth having; yet she plays hockey, and rows on the Serpentine, and would play football if she dared.

"Also, she can dance till tlis day comes, and then look, fresh and pretty in that trying light; blither dancing is too Rigorous to be perfectly graceful.

Her Idea of Exercise. "By exercise worth having shb means % ten-hours' tramp, with her meals at an inn or under a hedge. .But, though she knows what is real exercise and what is false, yet she delights in motoring. "She has persuaded herself and almost persuaded her.'mother, that it is real exercise, for she greedily enjoys the sense of ruahing through the air. And here"" is a sign of the times, that she is greatly interested in the motor's insides, and not at all in her own. The girls of this generation; many of them, have a most uncanny familiarity with _ the ways of motors, and she. would like, she 6ays, to be a lady chauffeur. .: • "She has habits but no tricks. At dinner she. eats her bread, not fidgets with it; she never twiddles her pocket-handker-Bhief, but ■often drops it; and she loses

her umbrella, once a month in the summer, and every fortnight in the winter; She frequently overturns vases and the like bric-a-brac, and, when she docs, nothing is left of them. . - ■ "She solves all political and social problems by her quick- way of taking both eides at once; .and there is none of. U3 whom she contradicts 'more often than. "They who .know her a little call her pleasant .but superficial; they who know hor well call her a ; fine character but r- ther uneven; they who Jive ..with; her admire her faith, reverence, self-judg-ment, and passionate desire to make the right use of lier life. . ■ . • ■ "At present, for she is only nineteen, her hold on these gifts is not very steady; it will be firmer three or four years her future let no prophesy, nor woman either." But hor littl© "world, says that if she does not marry and liavo children it will .be a dreadful waste of just the sort of girl who ought to do that." 1

certain exercises in: the open air daily ,would be of enormous value. The importance of training the young cannot be gainsaid. Habits early engrafted, in children of regularity, cleanliness, and order rive- never, without good result, and so surely the first lesson'm life should be "How to' Breathe' and how to make the best use of it—when they have got it. since thp first thin? we do on. entering this world is to-v draw Although it is possible to teach breathing'without singing I advocate tlie study of simple singing after breathing has been mastered for two reasons. The - first is that a child will more readily applv itself to a'study which presents some definite conclusion. ' .. . . To the mind of a child, breathing t in itself does not assume an engrossing in.terest, but when there is at the. end of the work some song of.'. appropriate sentiment a new light of interest at once'attaches to the' preliminary breathing exThe second reason is that the association with music of pure and simple design cannot fail to leave refinine influence in the mind of the child who participates therein. It is curious that the people of the twentieth, century do not pay more heedto the subject of brbatliing when we remember how ancient practice of the right art of breathing is. In the dim ages, some 2000 years; before Christ, the Chinese and Indians cured several dis-

eases by breathing. Buddhist priests practised the art, the Greeks and Romans used the breathing cserciso for other reasons also—as we learn from the beauty and symmetry of their ajatues. It wag not until the Middle Ages that the art became lost. To be. of real and lasting uso to mankind breathing -must . again be regarded seriously as .an art before it can have a fair chance of assisting in the war against the diseases which attack little children, and so form a menace to civilised humanity.