This word health means nothing more than a perfect operation of all the functions of the human system. To obtain so desirable an end, is certainly worth time and thought. Ninety-nine parents out of a hundred put their children into school, and are tenacious about their mental growth, while they leave the body to care for itself. Physical culture ought to begin as early as that of the mind. A boy should be taught the laws of health before he is taught the laws of arithmetic or grammar. Yet, while money is freely expended to train the intellect, it is only in rare instances that a child is put through a proper course of physical training. It is a generally accepted fact that a perfectly healthy condition of the body begets a corresponding state of mind. The mind, in short, is that indefinable something--even the metaphysicians have not determined what--but which relates to the brain, and is largely dependent upon that organ for its operations. Now, the brain, as we know, is matter. It has substance, color, and weight. It is, in short, a part of the body. When the brain becomes disordered, reason loses its control, and the result is insanity. On the other hand, if the body is kept well and strong, the brain performs its work without difficulty, and a person is prepared to grapple with the problems of life successfully. All this leads up to the argument which Hogan advances in favor of physical culture. Let a man devote a part of his time to the development of his muscles. He will be better and stronger in every way if he does. Proper and persistent exercise is the best medicine in the world. A pair of dumb-bells contain more virtue than a dozen prescriptions. A sand-bag may be made far more efficacious than the biggest box of pills ever compounded. If your spirits are low, if you are subject to fits of despondency, and find yourself looking upon the world with jaundiced eyes; if the color goes out of your cheek, and your digestion is bad; if, in short, you are one of the innumerable stoop-shouldered, sunken-eyed, and sallow-faced army, throw physic to the dogs, and go into a gymnasium. Put up the bells--ten pounders, perhaps, at first, but if you keep at it perseveringly, you will raise a hundred in time. Learn to box, to fence, to swing Indian clubs, to turn on the bar, and to walk. This last accomplishment is really the most difficult of all. Not walking from your house to your office or your shop, but getting over the ground in the true pedestrian style, and counting the distance by miles, not rods. Hogan has frequently made his thirty or forty miles a day, simply for recreation. It is such walking as this that will put the blood into an active circulation, and improve the whole system.