The man who lives an out-door life--who sleeps with the stars visible above him--who wins his bodily subsistence at first hand from the earth and waters--is a being who defies rain and sun, has a strange sense of elastic strength, may drink if he likes, and may smoke all day long, and feel none the worse for it. Some such return to the earth for the means of life is what gives vigor and developing power to the colonist of an older race cast on a land like ours. A few generations of men living in such fashion store up a capital of vitality which accounts largely for the prodigal activity displayed by their descendants, and made possible only by the sturdy contest with Nature which their ancestors have waged. That such a life is still led by multitudes of our countrymen is what alone serves to keep up our pristine force and energy. Are we not merely using the interest on these accumulations of power, but also wastefully spending the capital? From a few we have grown to millions, and already in many ways the people of the Atlantic coast present the peculiarities of an old nation. Have we lived too fast? The settlers here, as elsewhere, had ample room, and lived sturdily by their own hands, little troubled for the most part with those intense competitions which make it hard to live nowadays and embitter the daily bread of life. Neither had they the thousand intricate problems to solve which perplex those who struggle to-day in our teeming city hives. Above all, educational wants were limited in kind and in degree, and the physical man and woman were what the growing state most needed.