Page:How to Get Strong (1899).pdf/78

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.

HOW TO GET STRONG

ficient at whatever she is called on to do—as daughter, sister, wife or mother, teacher or friend—and far more attractive as well? Nor is the benefit limited even to her own lifetime, but her posterity are blessed by it as well. Would she like to have inherited consumptive tendencies, for instance, from her parent? Will her children like any better to inherit the same from her? In our Christian lands, we find, if history be correct, that the great men have almost invariably had remarkable mothers, while their fathers were as often nothing unusual. The Sandwich Island proverb, "If strong be the frame of the mother, her sons will make laws for the people," suggests truths that will hold good in many other places besides the Sandwich Islands. Let every girl and woman in this land bear in mind that, from every point of view, a vigorous and healthy body, kept toned up by rational, systematic, daily exercise, is one of the very greatest blessings which can be had in this world; that many persons spend tens of thousands of dollars in trying to regain even a part of this blessing when once they have lost it; that the means of getting it are easily within reach of all, who are not already broken by disease; that it requires no money; that it is never too late to begin; and that one hour a day, properly spent, is all that is needed to secure it.