4. _Spend at least two hours every day in active exercise in the open air._ This time may be divided into such portions as you find most convenient. The proper seasons for exercise are, about an hour either before or after a meal. This you may do without regard to the weather, provided you observe the following precautions, when it is cold, damp, or wet:--1. Exert yourself sufficiently to keep moderately warm. 2. Do not stop on your way, to get chilled. 3. On returning, change any garment that may be wet or damp, before sitting down. This course will not only keep up your regular habits, but produce a hardiness of constitution which will greatly increase your usefulness in life. It is a great mistake to suppose that exposure to a damp, vapory atmosphere is injurious to health. The danger lies in exposing yourself when the system is in a relaxed state, as it is during rest, after exercise. But, while a general action is kept up, by vigorous exercise, nature itself will resist the most unfriendly vapors of the atmosphere. There is a great and growing evil in the education of ladies of the middling and higher classes, at the present day. The tender and delicate manner in which they are bred, enfeebles their constitutions, and greatly diminishes their usefulness, in every station of life. Many of them are sickly, and few of them are able to endure the slightest hardships. To show that this is the fault of their education, we need only to refer to the condition of those young women whose circumstances in life render it necessary for them to labor. In most cases they possess hale and vigorous constitutions, and are even more capable of enduring hardships than most men of sedentary habits. There may be some exceptions to this remark; but if these cases were examined, we should doubtless find that the laws of nature have been, in some other respects, transgressed. I do not see how this delicate training can be reconciled with Christian principle. If we have devoted ourselves to the Lord, it is our duty not only to do all the good we can in this world, but to make ourselves _capable_ of doing as much as possible. The man in the parable was condemned for not _improving_ and _increasing_ his talent. Anything, then, which has a tendency to diminish our usefulness, should be regarded as _sin_. Exposure to all kinds of weather has this advantage also. It renders a person much less likely to take cold; and, of course, less subject to sickness. For a great proportion of diseases owe their origin to common colds. No part of a code of health is of more importance than exercise. Without it, everything else will fail. And it is as necessary that it should be _regular_ every day, and at nearly the same hours every day, as it is that meals should be regular. We might as well omit eating for a day, as to neglect exercise. The one is as necessary as the other, to promote the regular operations of the animal functions.