The rate of change in this country in education, in dress, and in diet andhabits of daily life surprises even the most watchful American observer. It isnow but fifteen years since this little book was written as a warning to arestless nation possessed of an energy tempted to its largest uses byunsurpassed opportunities. There is still need to repeat and reinforce my formerremonstrance, but I am glad to add that since I first wrote on these subjectsthey have not only grown into importance as questions of public hygiene, butvast changes for the better have come about in many of our ways of living, andeverywhere common sense is beginning to rule in matters of dress, diet, andeducation.
The American of the Eastern States and of the comfortable classes[1]is becoming notably more ruddy and more stout. The alteration in women as tothese conditions is most striking, and, if I am not mistaken, in England thereis a lessening tendency towards that excess of adipose matter which is still asurprise to the American visiting England for the first time.
I should scarcely venture to assert so positively that Americans hadobviously taken on flesh within a generation if what I see had not been observedby many others. It would, I think, be interesting to enter at length upon astudy of these remarkable changes, but that were scarcely within the scope ofthis little book.
[1]Happily, a large class with us.
Many years ago[2]I found occasion to set before the readers of Lippincott's Magazinecertain thoughts concerning work in America, and its results. Somewhat to mysurprise, the article attracted more notice than usually falls to the share ofsuch papers, and since then, from numerous sources, I have had the pleasure tolearn that my words of warning have been of good service to many thoughtlesssinners against the laws of labor and of rest. I have found, also, that theviews then set forth as to the peculiar difficulties of mental and physical workin this country are in strict accordance with the personal experience of foreignscholars who have cast their lots among us; while some of our best teachers havethanked me for stating, from a doctor's stand-point, the evils which their ownexperience had taught them to see in our present mode of tasking the brains ofthe younger girls.
I hope, therefore, that I am justified in the belief that in its new andlarger form my little tract may again claim attention from such as need itslessons. Since it was meant only for these, I need not excuse myself tophysicians for its simplicity; while I trust that certain of my brethren mayfind in it enough of original thought to justify its reappearance, as itsstatistics were taken from manuscript notes and have been printed in nosci