I will not begin by saying—as so many people do—that the small amount of sunshine we get in this country is not worth mentioning. This is not the case. Would you be surprised to learn that we have enough for health’s sake, and that when we do not get actual summer sunshine, we get the summer light all around us out of doors? That this light is diffused, filtered for us through the clouds that float high above, and that many people of wealth who leave this land of ours to seek for sunnier soils and sunnier shores, about the Riviera, the isles of the blue Levant or Madeira and the Canaries, make a most egregious mistake, and their health would be vastly improved were they to spend their time in the cool green midlands of England, on the sunshiny braes and hills of majestic Scotland or even down at our own seaside watering-places—quiet ones, mind you—where the wavelets ripple with gladsome laughter as they break on the golden sands? The maids of merry England seldom need the dry hot sunshine of the Soudan or banks of the gliding Nile. Our maidens, I maintain, are flowers, and beautiful flowers too, but not like those on far southern shores that can without hurt or harm stare the sun in the face. There is as much difference indeed between an English, Scottish, or Irish girl, and an Italian or Spanish as there is between the violets blue and the crimson flower of the cactus. Our sunshine—our own _own_ sunshine—is best for _us_, unless our lungs and blood are weakened by the on-coming of ailments like the deadly and all too fatal disease we call phthisis. Well, all my readers, even the youngest I hope have heard of the sunshine bath. It is a very old form of bathing indeed. It is said to have been invented by the Romans in their palmiest days, but it was used by Indians and Africans or Egyptians long long before Rome or Greece itself was very much of a country or kingdom. And they no doubt were but following the example set to them by the birds and beasts in forest and wildery. The Romans before they became demoralised and effete had special baths in which they could revel in the sunshine. These were very luxurious, and splendidly draped apartments open only to the sky, in which one could sit or lounge uncovered save by garments of gauze, and where, with the head alone protected at times by a shade, one could benefit in a most especial way from direct sun-rays. We have none such in our day. The strong need none such, and may best take the sunshine out of doors when it comes, not even troubling themselves to go in search of it. But so convinced am I of the benefits of sunshine that I confidently advise girls—young or not quite so young—to court it, to enjoy it all they can, to sit or recline in it, to hang their hammocks in it, and with or without a sunshade to dream and revel, laugh and live in it, for verily, verily, to the delicate, summer sunshine is life itself.