Advice to a Mother on the Management of Her ChildrenChavasse, Pye Henry
Science
Advice to a Mother on the Management of Her Children
Chavasse, Pye Henry
Child care; Children -- Health and hygiene; Infants -- Health and hygiene
Manly games--such as rowing, skating, cricket, quoits, foot-ball,
rackets, single-stick, bandy, bowls, skittles, and all gymnastic
exercises. Such games bring the muscles into proper action, and thus
cause them to be fully developed. They expand and strengthen the
chest; they cause a due circulation of the blood, making it to bound
merrily through the blood-vessels, and thus to diffuse health and
happiness in its course. Another excellent amusement for boys, is the
brandishing of clubs. They ought to be made in the form of a
constable's staff, but should be much larger and heavier. The manner
of handling them is so graphically described by Addison that I cannot
do better than transcribe it--"When I was some years younger than I am
at present, I used to employ myself in a more laborious diversion,
which I learned from a Latin treatise of exercises that is written
with great erudition; it is there called the [Greek: skiomachia] or
the fighting with a man's own shadow, and consists in the brandishing
of two short sticks grasped in each hand, and loaded with plugs of
lead at either end. This opens the chest, exercises the limbs, and
gives a man all the pleasure of boxing without the blows. I could wish
that several learned men would lay out that time which they employ in
controversies and disputes about nothing, in this method of fighting
with their own shadows. It might conduce very much to evaporate the
spleen which makes them uneasy to the public as well as to
themselves."
Another capital, healthful game is single-stick, which makes a boy "to
gain an upright and elastic carriage, and to learn the use of his
limbs."--_H. Kingsley_. Single-stick may be taught by any
drill-sergeant in the neighbourhood. Do everything to make a boy
strong. Remember, "the glory of young men is their strength."
If games were more patronised in youth, so many miserable, nervous,
useless creatures would not abound. Let a boy or girl, then, have
plenty of play; let half of his or her time be spent in play.
There ought to be a gymnasium established in every town of the
kingdom. The gymnasium, the cricket ground, and the swimming bath, are
among our finest establishments, and should be patronised accordingly.
First of all, by an abundance of exercise and fresh air make your boys
and girls strong, and then, in due time, they will be ready and be
able to have their minds properly cultivated. Unfortunately, in this
enlightened age, we commence at the wrong end--we put the cart before
the horse--we begin by cultivating the mind, and we leave the body to
be taken care of afterwards; the results are, broken health,
precocious, stunted, crooked, and deformed youths, and premature
decay.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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