the body on the loins, where nature intended it should be, and the legs propelled from thence, without stiffness at the knee or obtrusive motion of the hips, is, probably, the ideal of walking; such as one finds both in a highly trained woman and in the untaught perfection of a South Sea Islander.
I have spoken at length on the topic of walking, because its importance as an art of grace can not be overrated, and because it has a still deeper bearing on women's health. The training which secures an elegant carriage is precisely that which counteracts the tendency to a dozen fatal relaxations at different points of the frame, and prevents their appearance. No one ought to say that walking brings on the disorders which blanch and wither feminine life. The cause is the fatal, inherited weakness of constitution, shown by either undue redness or pallor, by indolence or excitability, which is a slow decay from its first breath, and poisons the hopes and the loveliness of so many women. These doomed
