In every large town all friends of humanity should unite for the enforcement of Sunday freedom, and spare no pains to brand the Sabbath bigots as enemies of the human race. We should found Sunday gardens, where our toil-worn fellow-citizens could enjoy their holidays with outdoor sports and outdoor dances, free museums, temperance drinks, healthy refreshments, collections of botanical and zoölogical curiosities. Country excursions on the only leisure day of the laboring classes should be as free as air and sunshine, and every civilized community should have a Recreation League for the promotion of that purpose. In the second century of our chronological era the cities of the Roman empire vied in the establishment of free public baths. Antioch alone had fourteen of them; Alexandria not less than twelve, and Rome itself at least twenty, some of them of such magnificence and extent that their foundations have withstood the ravages of sixteen centuries. Many of those establishments were entirely free, and even the Thermæ, or luxurious Warm Baths, of Caracalla admitted visitors for a gate-fee which all but the poorest could afford. Our boasted civilization will have to follow such examples before it can begin to deserve its name; and even the free circus games (by no means confined to the combats of armed prize-fighters) were preferable to the fanatical suppression of all popular sports which made the age of Puritanism the dreariest period of that dismal era known as the Reign of the Cross. The preservation of health is at least not less important than the preservation of Hebrew mythology; and communities who force their children to sacrifice a large portion of their time to the study of Asiatic miracle legends might well permit them to devote an occasional hour or two to the study of modern physiology. We should have health primers and teachers of hygiene, and the most primitive district school should find time for a few weekly lessons in the rudiments of sanitary science, such as the importance of ventilation, the best modes of exercise, the proper quality and quantity of our daily food, the significance of the stimulant habit, the use and abuse of dress, etc. Such text-books would prepare the way for health lectures, for health legislation and the reform of municipal hygiene. The untruth that “a man can not be defiled by things entering him from without” has been thoroughly exploded by the lessons of science, and should no longer excuse the neglect of that frugality which in the times of the pagan republics formed the best safeguard of national vigor. Milk, bread, and fruit, instead of greasy viands, alcohol, and narcotic drinks, would soon modify the mortality statistics of our large cities, and we should not hesitate to recognize the truth that the remarkable longevity of the Jews and Mohammedans has a great deal to do with their dread of impure food. CHAPTER II. STRENGTH. A.—LESSONS OF INSTINCT.