"If you construct an engine, and then cram it into a box so narrow and tight that it cannot move, and then crowd on the motive power, what would you expect? "Beautiful as you think my people, and as they really are, yet, by disregarding nature's laws, or trying to thwart her intentions, in a few generations to come, perhaps even in the next, we could have coarse features and complexions, stoop shoulders and deformity. "It has required patience, observation and care on the part of our ancestors to secure to us the priceless heritage of health and perfect bodies. Your people can acquire them by the same means." CHAPTER IV. As to Physical causes, I am inclined to doubt altogether of their operation in this particular; nor do I think that men owe anything of their temper or genius to the air, food, or climate.--_Bacon._ I listened with the keenest interest to this curious and instructive history; and when the Preceptress had ceased speaking. I expressed my gratitude for her kindness. There were many things about which I desired information, but particularly their method of eradicating disease and crime. These two evils were the prominent afflictions of all the civilized nations I knew. I believed that I could comprehend enough of their method of extirpation to benefit my own country. Would she kindly give it? "I shall take Disease first," she said, "as it is a near relative of Crime. You look surprised. You have known life-long and incurable invalids who were not criminals. But go to the squalid portion of any of your large cities, where Poverty and Disease go hand in hand, where the child receives its life and its first nourishment from a haggard and discontented mother. Starvation is her daily dread. The little tendernesses that make home the haven of the heart, are never known to her. Ill-fed, ill-clothed, ill-cherished, all that _might_ be refined and elevated in her nature, if properly cultivated, is choked into starveling shapes by her enemy--Want. "If you have any knowledge of nature, ask yourself if such a condition of birth and infancy is likely to produce a noble, healthy human being? Do your agriculturists expect a stunted, neglected tree to produce rare and luscious fruit?" I was surprised at the Preceptress' graphic description of wretchedness, so familiar to all the civilized nations that I knew, and asked: "Did such a state of society ever exist in this country?"