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BY BENJ. H. SANBORN & CO.

J. S. Cushing Co. - Berwick & Smith Co.
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.

FOREWORD

THE interest in physical education is a feature of the general conservation movement that has aroused the American people in recent years. Surely there is no greater national resource than the health and physical vigor of the people. This movement has taken four leading forms in our schools:

1. Better sanitary and hygienic conditions in school buildings.

2. Medical inspection, with adequate remedy for individual physical defects.

3. Instruction in personal and public hygiene.

4. Physical training as a means of physical development.

Play is nature's method of developing the nervous and muscular mechanisms that give control of the body. As children advance in age, they turn from the spontaneous friskings and gambolings of all young life, to games of coöperation involving intellectual and social elements. The mere joy of muscular exercise is forgotten in the effort to secure the object of the game. Imitation, emulation, rivalry, the most persuasive human motives are enlisted. But games have moral values quite equal in importance to their physical values. Coöperation, courtesy, self-control, a spirit of fairness are vital in wellconducted games. Hence the modern school is provided with a spacious playground equipped with suitable apparatus; for it is recognized that air, sunlight, companionship, and play are essential conditions of growth and development.

In all ages, rhythmic exercises have appealed to the sons and daughters of men. The very constitution of our nervous and muscular systems demands alternate tension and relaxation. When these are accurately timed, there is absence of fatigue and the maximum of physical benefit. That these activities are enjoyed is nature's testimony that they are normal and wholesome, if carried on in moderation and with due regard to the proprieties of life. They give smoothness, grace, and harmony to the carriage and movements of the body. For girls they are probably the best form of physical training.

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