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The pupils were required to go from school-room or music-room during the last quarter of every hour to the gymnasium, or into the open air; to take daily walks; to go through a severe drill in the gymnasium; to bathe daily in the sea, &c. They were taught to swim, and to row a boat.

They generally entered into these exercises with enthusiasm, which was so high at one time, that a class of girls learned to row a boat.

A complaint was made by some tender and timid persons, many years ago, that I endangered the life and limb of my pupils by the exercise in the gymnasium; similar to the complaint made last winter about my endangering their health by cold bathing, differing in the motive, however, as personal spite and itch for notoriety differ from real kindness.

Mr. George Combe, the eminent author of the "Constitution of Man," was then travelling in the United States. His attention was drawn to this matter, and his keen, philosophical eye took in the whole bearings of the matter at once.

In his "Tour in the United States," Vol. 1, p. 228, after describing the Pennsylvania and other Institutions for the Blind, he says: --

"Further, Dr. Howe's pupils increase the extent and variety of the exercises which they are enabled to take, by climbing up poles, jumping over beams, and performing other athletic feats. Here it is believed to be dangerous to do such acts, and the pupils always keep on the ground.

"It appears to us that Dr. Howe has a bold, active, enterprising mind, and to a certain extent he impresses his own character on the minds of his pupils.

"He enlarges the practical boundaries of their capacities by encouraging them to believe in the greatness of their natural extent."

This was the gist of the whole matter. "I sought to enlarge the practicable capacities of the blind as a class by encouraging them to believe in the greatness of their natural extent."

It seemed to me that when I had brought a puny, timid blind boy from lolling on the sofa, or exercising in a rocking chair, to plunge boldly into the sea, to swim manfully, to row a boat, and to do a hundred things unthought of at home, I had practically enlarged the boundaries of his capacities.

There was a certain risk in all this, as there must be in all physical training. Some boys may be ruptured in gymnastic exercises; may be drowned while learning to swim; may be killed in learning to ride; may break a leg kicking football; may walk, run, row to excess; but shall we give up teaching manly exercises for fear of such possible consequences?

Cold bathing formed merely an adjunct to my system of physical training, which required plentiful but simple diet, exercise in the open air, gymnastics within doors. But circumstances require that special notice be taken of that adjunct. A man's personality must necessarily be carried into his works; and my faith in the virtue of cold water has doubtless had something to do with its general use here.

Cleanliness is a high virtue; uncleanliness is sin.

I hold that no living human body wearing clothes, can be strictly clean, unless every part of it is washed every day. A corpse that has ceased to throw effete excretions upon the surface, may be washed once and forever.

The effete excretions thrown upon the skin of every living person at every moment, should be removed once a day, at least by water; especially from those persons in whom the circulation is languid, and the bodily functions are not performed vigorously and healthfully. In such persons the effete excretions are not only dead matter, but nasty matter. It is decidedly so with lunatics as a class, and with idiots; and to a certain extent with all those whose condition induces bodily inaction, as blindness, imprisonment, &c.; also in those who take very little bodily exercise. The bodily system of a healthy and robustuous person in full exercise, repels vigorously unwholesome agencies and he is less sinful, therefore, going unwashed, than is a feeble and sickly person,

The argument that unwashed men and women are well enough, and live as long as other people, has not the slightest weight with one who believes that it is by such sins as uncleanliness that death enters into the world, and still extorts from mankind the tribute of more than half the years of its heritage, and who firmly believes that by repentance and religious obedience to natural laws, our length of days may be doubled; and what is more important, that they may be passed without any bodily sickness and suffering.

But daily cold bathing was adopted into my system of physical training, not wholly with a view to cleanliness, but as a powerful hygienic, and even moral agency.

It was to help quicken the languid circulation so common among the blind, and to give tone and vigor to the body. It was to help strengthen the will, and give moral hardihood.

Being in the prime of life, I led the way myself in sea-bathing, as in other bodily exercises.

We had a bathing-house on the seashore, with a stove inside, and took a plunge every morning until late in the season. I remember keeping it up myself, for several seasons, until after Christmas; though I did not exact it of the pupils.