Every way her writings please me
both as to the means and the ends. I am pleased at the stress she lays
on observance of the physical laws, because the true reason is given.
Only in a strong and clean body can the soul do its message fitly.
She shows the meaning of the respect paid to personal neatness, both
in the indispensable form of cleanliness, and of that love of order
and arrangement, that must issue from a true harmony of feeling.
The praises of cold water seem to me an excellent sign in the age.
They denote a tendency to the true life. We are now to have, as a
remedy for ills, not orvietan, or opium, or any quack medicine, but
plenty of air and water, with due attention to warmth and freedom in
dress, and simplicity of diet.
Every day we observe signs that the natural feelings on these subjects
are about to be reinstated, and the body to claim care as the abode
and organ of the soul; not as the tool of servile labor, or the object
of voluptuous indulgence.
A poor woman, who had passed through the lowest grades of ignominy,
seemed to think she had never been wholly lost, "for," said she, "I
would always have good under-clothes;" and, indeed, who could doubt
that this denoted the remains of private self-respect in the mind?
A woman of excellent sense said, "It might seem childish, but to her
one of the most favorable signs of the times was that the ladies had
been persuaded to give up corsets.
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