Ledyard Bill

“ The town stands on the front of this low plateau, along the channel of the river, and has a population of nine thousand people, counting the nomadic lumbermen, who live half the year in the piny woods many hundred miles to the north, and the other half are floating on the rafts down the river; a rough but useful people, who betimes will lose their heads and winter's wages in a single drunken fray, which they seem to consider the highest pleasure vouchsafed to them each season as they return to the walks of civilized life. ”

“ Those who can should climb to the summit of one of these cliffs and get a glimpse of as lovely a picture as it is possible to find in a journey round the world. The winding river, dotted all over with islands and fringed along its shores with forest-trees, expanding now into some miniature lake, then lost and broken by some intervening bluff, to the right or left of which stretches the distant prairie; the whole forming a panoramic view unrivalled in interest and beauty by any we have ever seen elsewhere. ”

“ What a relief to struggling, disheartened men, whose lives are those of slaves, and families who pinch and starve themselves that they may possess the magical key to fashionable society! But what is fashionable society that it should have such charms for common and honest people? We give in answer what was given us by one who had had for many years access to it. He said, "Struggle to avoid it as the worst of calamities." It had swept him and his family from a position of comparative affluence to one of misfortune and distress. Fashion is the parent of both—"cussedness" and consumption. ”

“ With feelings akin to those coming of great sacrifices, the commands were followed, and this frail, dying girl was, in one brief summer, so far restored as that the glow of her checks and the sparkle of her eyes rivalled those of the farmer's fair daughter whose companion she had been.
City life is exceedingly destructive to young people, even when considered aside from all undue excitements, indecorous habits, and improprieties. ”

“ Then the utter obliviousness to all hygienic law in the packing of a score or more of people, like so many herrings in a box, into sleeping cars, over-heated and worse ventilated, and not—if measured by the rules of any common sense—more than sufficient for a fourth of the number occupying. How often have we risen in the morning, after spending the night in this manner, with a feeling akin to that which we fancy would come from being knocked in the head with a sack of meal, then gently stewed, and all out of pure fraternal regard to supply any deficiencies in our original bakings. ”

“ Beyond, on the right, stands boldly the lone sentinel of Mountain Island, at the base of which is the small village of Trempeleau, where a moment's halt is made, and the wheels of the great ship splash through the water again, all tremulous with nervous energy and pent-up power as they bend slowly to their slavish labor; and, the only labor that man has any right to make a slave of is that with iron arms and metallic lungs. He may compel these to work and groan and sweat at every pore with honor to himself and the added respect of all mankind. ”

“ Even the Humboldts of the race, favored with long life, good health, and devotedness, declare they have attained to but little more than the alphabet of knowledge, and they—few in number—have experienced few of those restrictions which hedge about the lives of most people. All cannot be great linguists any more than all can be great inventors, and it were just as valuable and reasonable an expenditure of time to teach a child to be one as the other. ”

“ Shoulders are bent, spines are curved, the blood, lacking its supplies of oxygen, loses vitality and creeps sluggishly through the veins, carrying no vivid color to the cheek and lips, giving no activity to the brain, no fire to the eye. Let women throw away their fancy work, dispense to a degree with ruffles and tucks, and, in a dress that will admit of a long breath, walk in the clear bracing air. ”

“ It is seen that the selection of a home for ourselves and families is a matter of the very highest moment to all who desire to prolong life and enjoy the full possession of all their powers. Very trifling attention has been given this question, as a rule, since we see on all hands multitudes crowding into unhealthy precincts, to say nothing of those more pestilential-breeding apartments which are everywhere inhabited by the poorer class, as well as by thousands of the well-to-do and intelligent people of both town and country. ”

“ The average dimensions of the class of steamers employed in this trade may be said to be about two hundred and forty feet in length and thirty-five in breadth, drawing from two to four feet of water, with accommodations for about one hundred and fifty cabin and as many more second-class passengers.
The first deck is wholly devoted to the machinery and freight; and all is exposed to view from every side. The great furnaces occupy the centre of this deck, and their lungs of fire roar and breathe flames eagerly and dangerously out, like a serpent's forked, flashing tongue. ”

“ Of what benefit is a smattering of foreign language, except to make people ridiculous? and that class is already sufficiently large; far better that they learned to speak and spell their mother tongue with a commendable degree of accuracy, or that they learn to train future families in consonance with the laws of nature, and save to health the time spent in poorly-ventilated rooms, where, under the pressure of the modern school system, everything valuable and practical seems sacrificed to the ephemeral and non-essential. ”

“ It might be entirely safe to assume that the people of Minnesota, as a whole, are distinguished by a more aesthetic character than their neighbors living in the nearly dead level country below them. It is but reasonable to suppose that some, at least, in seeking new homes, would give a preference to attractive localities, even at the sacrifice of something of fertility; which is, to some extent, the case; as the low flat lands of the rivers below are unrivalled in their power of production—whether it be of the grains of wheat or disease. ”

“ Boys are naturally more out of doors, since their love of out-of-door life is greater than that of girls, and their sports all lead them into the open air, and by this means they more easily correct the constitutional and natural tendencies to disease, if any there be. Then, too, the iron hand of fashion has not fastened itself so relentlessly upon them as to dwarf their bodies and warp their souls, as it has in some degree the gentler and better and more tender half of mankind, to whom the larger share of this chapter seems the more directly to apply. ”

“ Wheat is the great staple product of the West, and is the chief article of export. It is this, more than all things else, which puts the thousands of railway trains in motion, and spreads the white wings of commerce on all the lakes and oceans. This important grain is, in the valley of the Mississippi, nowhere so much at home as in this State. The superior quality of the berry, and the abundant and steady yield of her acres, long since settled the question of her rank as a grain-producing State. ”

“ All excesses in labor are to be reprehended, and not uncommon is it that we hear of health ruined and even life jeopardized by some foolish or thoughtless effort. Young men ought to guard against strife in labor, which usually accompanies an ambition to excel. We know of an instance where a company of boys, by lifting against each other, one was ruptured. And again, an "itinerant" came along with a machine known as a lung-tester; one fair-haired, slender youth, having fears he would fall below the average, made so great an effort as seriously to impair his health for the time. ”

“ What would an exclusive vegetable diet be worth to them, exposed as they are? With us, lying between the two extremes, with a climate and country abounding in both fruits and animals, with seasons of cold and heat in nearly equal extremes, it seems quite rational that a mixed diet, regulated by common-sense rules, is the best. Certainly the highest civilization to which man has yet attained is found in the temperate zones, where neither the one nor the other extreme in diet has obtained. ”

“ What a field for enterprise is presented to lumbermen! A vast forest, a river furnishing transportation and unlimited power for manufacturing, and, finally, an open sea, with almost countless markets!
Besides this, there lies among the cliffs and high lands adjoining the rapids of this river inexhaustible quarries of slate, surpassing, we are informed, those of England in quality and quantity, and which must ere long receive that attention they seem to demand at the hands of capital. ”

“ These form the exceptions; but for all to essay the task, regardless of natural inclination and of the true relation which life bears to their individual cases, is simply absurd, and can only be accounted for in this wise, that fashion seems to demand it, as it does many other outrageous requirements, to some of which, as they concern health, we shall have occasion to refer as we proceed. Life is too short, at longest, and is filled with too practical requirements, for the most of mankind to try to master or even familiarize themselves with all the sciences of which the world has knowledge. ”

“ Better that our youth should have a healthy physique, even if they cannot read before they are ten years old, as in this case they would soon overtake and outstrip the pale, narrow-chested child who is the wonder of the nursery and the Sunday-school. Children are animals that are to be made the most of. Give them ample pasturage, and let them be as free as is consistent with the discipline they need; keep the girls out of corsets and tight shoes, give them plain food, fresh air, and plenty of sleep."
Nothing invites disease so much as the present style of living among the well-to-do people. ”

“ All pulmonic patients will, while taking counsel of some physician, do well to remember that their cases rest largely in their own hands; indeed, more depends on their own care of themselves than on the efficacy of any system of medicine. Lung disease is usually of a most flattering character, and its influence on the mind differs from that of any other, in that the patient is lulled into a serene and hopeful condition. ”

“ And, again, great districts, occupying a half of a State, are so detrimental to sound health that half their population are whelmed with fevers—bilious, intermittent, and typhoid—from year's end to year's end. Such a locality is the valley of the Wabash River, in Indiana. In passing through that country, after a season of prolonged wet summer weather, we have seen more of the inhabitants prostrate from disease, incidental to the climate, than there were well ones to care for them. ”

“ The custom of late hours, night air, and the vitiated air of apartments where companies assemble together, with the liability to contract colds by being detained in draughts, or from want of sufficient protection while returning from social assemblies; all these things destroy annually a great army of young people, who either do not think of consequences or else willfully neglect their lives to pay homage to fashion—the curse of the world.
We cannot think all parents wholly neglectful in teaching their children how to preserve health, and much of responsibility must rest with the young ”

“ Ask the farmer on the distant plains what consideration he would give for pure and abundant water as against soil. Her grasses are more tender and sweeter, and her beef better than is that of those localities which rival her in fertility. Go walk through the waving fields of golden grain in summer-time, spread almost endlessly up and down her beautiful valleys, and far out over the rolling prairies, and then answer if eye ever beheld better, or more of it, in the same space, anywhere this side of the Sierras. ”

“ SLEEP is the "sweet restorer," and invisible physician, playing an important part in the restoration and maintenance of health. Without this daily dying, as we are constituted, there could be no daily living; and whatever promotes sound, natural, balmy slumber is beyond all price in the economy of life. Chief among these promptings to restful slumber are a clear conscience, proper exercise, a suitable diet, and place. All but the latter have been considered. One-third of the whole time of life is spent in bed. ”

“ Neighborhood rivalries of suitable buildings would have followed, and, instead of incompetent teachers being the rule, they would have been the exception, and those of us whose fortune it has been to be born in New England would not now be such "jacks of all trades and masters of none" as we are. The West deserves great commendation for their lively interest in all that relates to the education of the young. Why, almost any of these States excel those of New England in school matters, outside of two or three of the great universities which they happen to possess. ”