those perfect methods the result of which is "Nothing"—except force stored up for the specialist teachers to use. In the physical life it is now perfectly understood that it is some teachers' business to produce no result except a neutralization of the harm which is incidentally done by other teachers as a necessary concomitant to the good they are doing. Fifty years ago any one who had ordered young ladies to put their hands on their hips, then on their toes, and to assume, in fact, every position condemned by their parents and teachers as disorderly, would have been supposed to be trying to undo all the good work of parents and teachers, and to set children against lawful authority. Now, everybody knows that the very business of the Gymnast is to undo the cramping effect of the positions rendered necessary by the exigencies of study and of society; and nobody objects to its being done. We have all found out that the Gymnasts are the friends, not the enemies, of Order. We have seen the beneficial effects of gymnastic on the pupils; few notice the silent influence for good which it has exerted, through the pupils, on the parents and teachers; but it has exerted an influence on us all. What mother could condemn her daughter's desire for reversal of physical position as "unseemly" and "unlady-like," in the face of the fact that the girl will presently assume the condemned posture by the orders of the graceful lady who presides in the Gymnasium? We are content, now, to tell little girls that standing with one's hand on one's hip is a proceeding more suited to the play-room than the drawing-room. The Gymnasts only profess to cure the weakness of children's muscles: in reality they are helping to eradicate the irreverent
