GYMNASTICS.

So your zeal for physical training begins to wane a little, my friend? I

thought it would, in your particular case, because it began too ardently

and was concentrated too exclusively on your one hobby of pedestrianism.

Just now you are literally under the weather. It is the equinoctial

storm. No matter, you say; did not Olmsted foot it over England under

an umbrella? did not Wordsworth regularly walk every guest round

Windermere, the day after arrival, rain or shine? So, the day before

yesterday, you did your four miles out, on the Northern turnpike, and

returned splashed to the waist; and yesterday you walked three miles

out, on the Southern turnpike, and came back soaked to the knees. To-day

the storm is slightly increasing, but you are dry thus far, and wish to

remain so; exercise is a humbug; you will give it all up, and go to the

Chess-Club. Don't go to the Chess-Club; come with me to the Gymnasium.

Chess may be all very well to tax with tough problems a brain otherwise

inert, to vary a monotonous day with small events, to keep one awake

during a sleepy evening, and to arouse a whole family next morning

for the adjustment over the breakfast-table of that momentous

state-question, whether the red king should have castled at the fiftieth

move or not till the fifty-first. But for an average American man, who

leaves his place of business at nightfall with his head a mere furnace

of red-hot brains and his body a pile of burnt-out cinders, utterly

exhausted in the daily effort to put ten dollars more of distance

between his posterity and the poor-house,--for such a one to kindle up

afresh after office-hours for a complicated chess-problem seems much as

if a wood-sawyer, worn out with his week's work, should decide to order

in his saw-horse on Saturday evening, and saw for fun. Surely we have

little enough recreation at any rate, and, pray, let us make that little

un-intellectual. True, something can be said in favor of chess--for

instance, that no money can be made out of it, and that it is so far

profitable to us overworked Americans: but even this is not enough. For

this once, lock your brains into your safe, at nightfall, with your

other valuables; don't go to the Chess-Club; come with me to the

Gymnasium.

Ten leaps up a steep, worn-out stairway, through a blind entry to

another stairway, and yet another, and we emerge suddenly upon the floor

of a large lighted room, a mere human machine-shop of busy motion, where

Indian clubs are whirling, dumb-bells pounding, swings vibrating, and

arms and legs flying in all manner of unexpected directions. Henderson

sits with his big proportions quietly rested against the weight-boxes,

pulling with monotonous vigor at the fifty-pound weights,--"the

Stationary Engine" the boys call him. For a contrast, Draper is floating

up and down between the parallel bars with such an airy lightness, that

you think he must have hung up his body in the dressing-room, and is

exercising only in his arms and clothes. Parsons is swinging in the

rings, rising to the ceiling before and behind; up and down he goes,

whirling over and over, converting himself into a mere tumbler-pigeon,

yet still bound by the long, steady vibration of the human pendulum.

Another is running a race with him, if sitting in the swing be running;

and still another is accompanying their motion, clinging to the

_trapèze_. Hayes, meanwhile, is spinning on the horizontal bar, now

backward, now forward, twenty times without stopping, pinioned through

his bent arms, like a Fakir on his iron. See how many different ways

of ascending a vertical pole these boys are devising!--one climbs with

hands and legs, another with hands only, another is crawling up on

all-fours in Feegee fashion, while another is pegging his way up by

inserting pegs in holes a foot apart,--you will see him sway and

tremble a bit, before he reaches the ceiling. Others are at work with a

spring-board and leaping-cord; higher and higher the cord is moved, one

by one the competitors step aside defeated, till the field is left to a

single champion, who, like an India-rubber ball, goes on rebounding till

he seems likely to disappear through the chimney, like a Ravel. Some

sturdy young visitors, farmers by their looks, are trying their

strength, with various success, at the sixty-pound dumb-bell, when some

quiet fellow, a clerk or a tailor, walks modestly to the hundred-pound

weight, and up it goes as steadily as if the laws of gravitation had

suddenly shifted their course, and worked upward instead of down. Lest,

however, they should suddenly resume their original bias, let us cross

to the dressing-room, and, while you are assuming flannel shirt or

complete gymnastic suit, as you may prefer, let us consider the merits

of the Gymnasium.

Do not say that the public is growing tired of hearing about physical

training. You might as well speak of being surfeited with the sight of

apple-blossoms, or bored with roses,--for these athletic exercises are,

to a healthy person, just as good and refreshing. Of course, any one

becomes insupportable who talks all the time of this subject, or of any

other; but it is the man who fatigues you, not the theme. Any person

becomes morbid and tedious whose whole existence is absorbed in any

one thing, be it playing or praying. Queen Elizabeth, after admiring a

gentleman's dancing, refused to look at the dancing-master, who did it

better. "Nay," quoth her bluff Majesty,--"'tis his business,--I'll none

of him." Professionals grow tiresome. Books are good,--so is a boat;

but a librarian and a ferryman, though useful to take you where you

wish to go, are not necessarily enlivening as companions. The annals

of "Boxiana" and "Pedestriana" and "The Cricket-Field" are as pathetic

records of monomania as the bibliographical works of Mr. Thomas Dibdin.

Margaret Fuller said truly, that we all delight in gossip, and differ

only in the department of gossip we individually prefer; but a monotony

of gossip soon grows tedious, be the theme horses or octavos.

Not one-tenth part of the requisite amount has yet been said of athletic

exercises as a prescription for this community. There was a time when

they were not even practised generally among American boys, if we may

trust the foreign travellers of a half-century ago, and they are but

just being raised into respectability among American men. Motley says

of one of his Flemish heroes, that "he would as soon have foregone his

daily tennis as his religious exercises,"--as if ball-playing were then

the necessary pivot of a great man's day. Some such pivot of physical

enjoyment we must have, for no other race in the world needs it so

much. Through the immense inventive capacity of our people, mechanical

avocations are becoming almost as sedentary and intellectual as the

professions. Among Americans, all hand-work is constantly being

transmuted into brain-work; the intellect gains, but the body suffers,

and needs some other form of physical activity to restore the

equilibrium. As machinery becomes perfected, all the coarser tasks are

constantly being handed over to the German or Irish immigrant,--not

because the American cannot do the particular thing required, but

because he is promoted to something more intellectual. Thus transformed

to a mental laborer, he must somehow supply the bodily deficiency. If

this is true of this class, it is of course true of the student, the

statesman, and the professional man. The general statement recently made

by Lewes, in England, certainly holds not less in America:--"It is rare

to meet with good digestion among the artisans of the brain, no matter

how careful they may be in food and general habits." The great majority

of our literary and professional men could echo the testimony of

Washington Irving, if they would only indorse his wise conclusion:--"My

own case is a proof how one really loses by over-writing one's self

and keeping too intent upon a sedentary occupation. I attribute all my

present indisposition, which is losing me time, spirits, everything, to

two fits of close application and neglect of all exercise while I was at

Paris. I am convinced that he who devotes two hours each day to vigorous

exercise will eventually gain those two and a couple more into the

bargain."

Indeed, there is something involved in the matter far beyond any merely

physical necessity. All our natures need something more than mere bodily

exertion; they need bodily enjoyment. There is, or ought to be, in all

of us a touch of untamed gypsy nature, which should be trained, not

crushed. We need, in the very midst of civilization, something which

gives a little of the zest of savage life; and athletic exercises

furnish the means. The young man who is caught down the bay in a sudden

storm, alone in his boat, with wind and tide against him, has all the

sensations of a Norway sea-king,--sensations thoroughly uncomfortable,

if you please, but for the thrill and glow they bring. Swim out after a

storm at Dove Harbor, topping the low crests, diving through the high

ones, and you feel yourself as veritable a South-Sea Islander as if you

were to dine that day on missionary instead of mutton. Tramp, for a

whole day, across hill, marsh, and pasture, with gun, rod, or whatever

the excuse may be, and camp where you find yourself at evening, and

you are as essentially an Indian on the Blue Hills as among the Rocky

Mountains. Less depends upon circumstances than we fancy, and more upon

our personal temperament and will. All the enjoyments of Browning's

"Saul," those "wild joys of living" which make us happy with their

freshness as we read of them, are within the reach of all, and make us

happier still when enacted. Every one, in proportion as he develops his

own physical resources, puts himself in harmony with the universe, and

contributes something to it; even as Mr. Pecksniff, exulting in his

digestive machinery, felt a pious delight after dinner in the thought

that this wonderful apparatus was wound up and going.

A young person can no more have too much love of adventure than a mill

can have too much water-power; only it needs to be worked, not wasted.

Physical exercises give to energy and daring a legitimate channel,

supply the place of war, gambling, licentiousness, highway-robbery, and

office-seeking. De Quincey, in like manner, says that Wordsworth made

pedestrianism a substitute for wine and spirits; and Emerson thinks the

force of rude periods "can rarely be compensated in tranquil times,

except by some analogous vigor drawn from occupations as hardy as war."

The animal energy cannot and ought not to be suppressed; if debarred

from its natural channel, it will force for itself unnatural ones. A

vigorous life of the senses not only does not tend to sensuality in the

objectionable sense, but it helps to avert it. Health finds joy in mere

existence; daily breath and daily bread suffice. This innocent enjoyment

lost, the normal desires seek abnormal satisfactions. The most brutal

prize-fighter is compelled to recognize the connection between purity

and vigor, and becomes virtuous when he goes into training, as the

heroes of old observed chastity, in hopes of conquering at the Olympic

Games. The very word _ascetic_ comes from a Greek word signifying the

preparatory exercises of an athlete. There are spiritual diseases which

coil poisonously among distorted instincts and disordered nerves, and

one would be generally safer in standing sponsor for the soul of the

gymnast than of the dyspeptic.

Of course, the demand of our nature is not always for continuous

exertion. One does not always seek that "rough exercise" which Sir John

Sinclair asserts to be "the darling idol of the English." There are

delicious languors, Neapolitan reposes, Creole siestas, "long days and

solid banks of flowers." But it is the birthright of the man of the

temperate zones to alternate these voluptuous delights with more heroic

ones, and sweeten the reverie by the toil. So far as they go, the

enjoyments of the healthy body are as innocent and as ardent as those of

the soul. As there is no ground of comparison, so there is no ground of

antagonism. How compare a sonata and a sea-bath or measure the Sistine

Madonna against a gallop across country? The best thanksgiving for each

is to enjoy the other also, and educate the mind to ampler nobleness.

After all, the best verdict on athletic exercises was that of the great

Sully, when he said, "I was always of the same opinion with Henry

IV. concerning them: he often asserted that they were the most solid

foundation, not only of discipline and other military virtues, but also

of those noble sentiments and that elevation of mind which give one

nature superiority over another."

We are now ready, perhaps, to come to the question, How are these

athletic enjoyments to be obtained? The first and easiest answer is, By

taking a long walk every day. If people would actually do this, instead

of forever talking about doing it, the object might be gained. To be

sure, there are various defects in this form of exercise. It is not a

play, to begin with, and therefore does not withdraw the mind from its

daily cares; the anxious man recurs to his problems on the way; and each

mile, in that case, brings fresh weariness to brain as well as body.

Moreover, there are, according to Dr. Grau, "three distinct groups

of muscles which are almost totally neglected where walking alone is

resorted to, and which consequently exist only in a crippled state,

although they are of the utmost importance, and each stands in close

_rapport_ with a number of other functions of the greatest necessity to

health and life." These he afterwards classifies as the muscles of the

shoulders and chest, having a bearing on the lungs,--the abdominal

muscles, bearing on the corresponding organs,--and the spinal muscles,

which are closely connected with the whole nervous system.

But the greatest practical difficulty is, that walking, being the least

concentrated form of exercise, requires a larger appropriation of

time than most persons are willing to give. Taken liberally, and in

connection with exercises which are more concentrated and have more play

about them, it is of great value, and, indeed, indispensable. But so

far as I have seen, instead of these other pursuits taking the place of

pedestrianism, they commonly create a taste for it; so that, when the

sweet spring-days come round, you will see our afternoon gymnastic class

begin to scatter literally to the four winds; or they look in for a

moment, on their way home from the woods, their hands filled and scented

with long wreaths of the trailing arbutus.

But the gymnasium is the normal type of all muscular exercise,--the only

form of it which is impartial and comprehensive, which has something for

everybody, which is available at all seasons, through all weathers,

in all latitudes. All other provisions are limited: you cannot row

in winter nor skate in summer, spite of parlor-skates and ice-boats;

ball-playing requires comrades; riding takes money; everything needs

daylight: but the gymnasium is always accessible. Then it is the only

thing which trains the whole body. Military drill makes one prompt,

patient, erect, accurate, still, strong. Rowing takes one set of muscles

and stretches them through and through, till you feel yourself turning

into one long spiral spring from finger-tips to toes. In cricket or

base-ball, a player runs, strikes, watches, catches, throws, must learn

endurance also. Yet, no matter which of these may be your special hobby,

you must, if you wish to use all the days and all the muscles, seek the

gymnasium at last,--the only thorough panacea.

The history of modern gymnastic exercises is easily written: it is

proper to say modern,--for, so far as apparatus goes, the ancient

gymnasiums seem to have had scarcely anything in common with our own.

The first institution on the modern plan was founded at Schnepfenthal,

near Gotha, in Germany, in 1785, by Salzmann, a clergyman and the

principal of a boys' school. After eight years of experience, his

assistant, Gutsmuths, wrote a book upon the subject, which was

translated into English, and published at London in 1799 and at

Philadelphia in 1800, under the name of "Salzmann's Gymnastics." No

similar institution seems to have existed in either country, however,

till those established by Voelckers, in London, in 1824, and by Dr.

Follen, at Cambridge, Mass., in 1826. Both were largely patronized

at first, and died out at last. The best account of Voelckers's

establishment will be found in Hone's "Every-Day Book"; its plan seems

to have been unexceptionable. But Dr. James Johnson, writing his

"Economy of Health" ten years after, declared that these German

exercises had proved "better adapted to the Spartan youth than to the

pallid sons of pampered cits, the dandies of the desk, and the squalid

tenants of attics and factories," and also adds the epitaph, "This

ultra-gymnastic enthusiast did much injury to an important branch of

hygiene by carrying it to excess, and consequently by causing its

desuetude." And Dr. Jarvis, in his "Practical Physiology," declares the

unquestionable result of the American experiment to have been "general

failure."

Accordingly, the English, who are reputed kings in all physical

exercises, have undoubtedly been far surpassed by the Germans, and

even by the French, in gymnastics. The writer of the excellent little

"Handbook for Gymnastics," George Forrest, M.A., testifies strongly to

this deficiency. "It is curious that we English, who possess perhaps

the finest and strongest figures of all European nations, should leave

ourselves so undeveloped bodily. There is not one man in a hundred who

can even raise his toes to a level with his hands, when suspended by the

later members; and yet to do so is at the very beginning of gymnastic

exercises. We, as a rule, are strong in the arms and legs, but weak

across the loins and back, and are apparently devoid of that beautiful

set of muscles that run round the entire waist, and show to such

advantage in the ancient statues. Indeed, at a bathing-place, I can pick

out every gymnast merely by the development of those muscles."

It is the Germans and the military portion of the French nation,

chiefly, who have developed gymnastic exercises to their present

elaboration, while the working out of their curative applications was

chiefly due to Ling, a Swede. In the German manuals, such, for instance,

as Eiselen's "Turnübungen," are to be found nearly all the stock

exercises of our institutions. Until within a few years, American skill

has added nothing to these, except through the medium of the circus; but

the present revival of athletic exercises is rapidly placing American

gymnasts in advance of the _Turners_, both in the feats performed and

in the style of doing them. Never yet have I succeeded in seeing a

thoroughly light and graceful German gymnast, while again and again I

have seen Americans who carried into their severest exercise such

an airy, floating elegance of motion, that all the beauty of Greek

sculpture appeared to return again, and it seemed as if plastic art

might once more make its studio in the gymnasium.

The apparatus is not costly. Any handful of young men in the smallest

country-village, with a very few dollars and a little mechanical skill,

can put up in any old shed or shoe-shop a few simple articles of

machinery, which will, through many a winter evening, vary the monotony

of the cigar and the grocery-bench by an endless variety of manly

competitions. Fifteen cents will bring by mail from the publishers of

the "Atlantic" Forrest's little sixpenny "Handbook," which gives a

sufficient number of exercises to form an introduction to all others;

and a gymnasium is thus easily established. This is just the method of

the simple and sensible Germans, who never wait for elegant upholstery.

A pair of plain parallel bars, a movable vaulting-bar, a wooden horse,

a spring-board, an old mattress to break the fall, a few settees where

sweethearts and wives may sit with their knitting as spectators, and

there is a _Turnhalle_ complete,--to be henceforward filled, two or

three nights in every week, with cheery German faces, jokes, laughs,

gutturals, and gambols.

But this suggests that you are being kept too long in the anteroom. Let

me act as cicerone through this modest gymnastic hall of ours. You will

better appreciate all this oddly shaped apparatus, if I tell you in

advance, as a connoisseur does in his picture-gallery, precisely what

you are expected to think of each particular article.

You will notice, however, that a part of the gymnastic class are

exercising without apparatus, in a series of rather grotesque movements

which supple and prepare the body for more muscular feats: these are

calisthenic exercises. Such are being at last introduced, thanks to Dr.

Lewis and others, into our common schools. At the word of command, as

swiftly as a conjuror twists his puzzle-paper, these living forms are

shifted from one odd resemblance to another, at which it is quite lawful

to laugh, especially if those laugh who win. A series of windmills,--a

group of inflated balloons,--a flock of geese all asleep on one leg,--a

circle of ballet-dancers, just poised to begin,--a band of patriots

just kneeling to take an oath upon their country's altar,--a senate of

tailors,--a file of soldiers,--a whole parish of Shaker worshippers,--a

Japanese embassy performing _Ko-tow_: these all in turn come like

shadows,--so depart. This complicated attitudinizing forms the

preliminary to the gymnastic hour. But now come and look at some of the

apparatus.

Here is a row of Indian clubs, or sceptres, as they are sometimes

called,--tapering down from giants of fifteen pounds to dwarfs of four.

Help yourself to a pair of dwarfs, at first; grasp one in each hand,

by the handle; swing one of them round your head quietly, dropping the

point behind as far as possible,--then the other,--and so swing them

alternately some twenty times. Now do the same back-handed, bending the

wrist outward, and carrying the club behind the head first. Now

swing them both together, crossing them in front, and then the same

back-handed; then the same without crossing, and this again backward,

which you will find much harder. Place them on the ground gently after

each set of processes. Now can you hold them out horizontally at arm's

length, forward and then sideways? Your arms quiver and quiver, and down

come the clubs thumping at last. Take them presently in a different and

more difficult manner, holding each club with the point erect instead of

hanging down; it tries your wrists, you will find, to manipulate them

so, yet all the most graceful exercises have this for a basis. Soon you

will gain the mastery of heavier implements than you begin with, and

will understand how yonder slight youth has learned to handle his two

heavy clubs in complex curves that seem to you inexplicable, tracing

in the air a device as swift and tangled as that woven by a swarm of

gossamer flies above a brook, in the sultry stillness of the summer

noon.

This row of masses of iron, laid regularly in order of size, so as to

resemble something between a musical instrument and a gridiron, consists

of dumb-bells weighing from four pounds to a hundred. These playthings,

suited to a variety of capacities, have experienced a revival of favor

within a few years, and the range of exercises with them has been

greatly increased. The use of very heavy ones is, so far as I can find,

a peculiarly American hobby, though not originating with Dr. Windship.

Even he, at the beginning of his exhibitions, used those weighing only

ninety-eight pounds; and it was considered an astonishing feat, when,

a little earlier, Mr. Richard Montgomery used to "put up" a dumb-bell

weighing one hundred and one pounds. A good many persons, in different

parts of the country, now handle one hundred and twenty-five, and Dr.

Windship has got much farther on. There is, of course, a knack in

using these little articles, as in every other feat, yet it takes good

extensor muscles to get beyond the fifties. The easiest way of elevating

the weight is to swing it up from between the knees; or it may be thrown

up from the shoulder, with a simultaneous jerk of the whole body; but

the only way of doing it handsomely is to put it up from the shoulder

with the arm alone, without bending the knee, though you may bend the

body as much as you please. Dr. Windship now puts up one hundred and

forty-one pounds in this manner, and by the aid of a jerk can elevate

one hundred and eighty with one arm. This particular movement with

dumb-bells is most practised, as affording a test of strength; but there

are many other ways of using them, all exceedingly invigorating, and all

safe enough, unless the weight employed be too great, which it is very

apt to be. Indeed, there is so much danger of this, that at Cambridge it

has been deemed best to exclude all beyond seventy pounds. Nevertheless,

the dumb-bell remains the one available form of home or office exercise:

it is a whole athletic apparatus packed up in the smallest space; it is

gymnastic pemmican. With one fifty-pound dumb-bell, or a pair of half

that size--or more or less, according to his strength and habits,--a

man may exercise nearly every muscle in his body in half an hour, if he

has sufficient ingenuity in positions. If it were one's fortune to be

sent to prison,--and the access to such retirement is growing more and

more facile in many regions of our common country,--one would certainly

wish to carry a dumb-bell with him, precisely as Dr. Johnson carried an

arithmetic in his pocket on his tour to the Hebrides, as containing the

greatest amount of nutriment in the compactest form.

Apparatus for lifting is not yet introduced into most gymnasiums, in

spite of the recommendations of the Roxbury Hercules: beside the fear

of straining, there is the cumbrous weight and cost of iron apparatus,

while, for some reason or other, no cheap and accurate dynamometer has

yet come into the market. Running and jumping, also, have as yet been

too much neglected in our institutions, or practised spasmodically

rather than systematically. It is singular how little pains have been

taken to ascertain definitely what a man can do with his body,--far

less, as Quetelet has observed, than in regard to any animal which man

has tamed, or any machine which he has invented. It is stated, for

instance, in Walker's "Manly Exercises," that six feet is the maximum

of a high leap, with a run,--and certainly one never finds in the

newspapers a record of anything higher; yet it is the English tradition,

that Ireland, of Yorkshire, could clear a string raised fourteen feet,

and that he once kicked a bladder at sixteen. No spring-board would

explain a difference so astounding. In the same way, Walker fixes the

limit of a long leap without a run at fourteen feet, and with a run at

twenty-two,--both being large estimates; and Thackeray makes his young

Virginian jump twenty-one feet and three inches, crediting George

Washington with a foot more. Yet the ancient epitaph of Phayllus the

Crotonian claimed for him nothing less than fifty-five feet, on an

inclined plane. Certainly the story must have taken a leap also.

These ladders, aspiring indefinitely into the air, like Piranesi's

stairways, are called technically peak-ladders; and dear banished

T.S.K., who always was puzzled to know why Mount Washington kept up such

a pique against the sky, would have found his joke fit these ladders

with great precision, so frequent the disappointment they create. But

try them, and see what trivial appendages one's legs may become,--since

the feet are not intended to touch these polished rounds. Walk up

backward on the under side, hand over hand, then forward; then go up

again, omitting every other round; then aspire to the third round, if

you will. Next grasp a round with both hands, give a slight swing of

the body, let go, and grasp the round above, and so on upward; then the

same, omitting one round, or more, if you can, and come down in the

same way. Can you walk up on _one_ hand? It is not an easy thing, but a

first-class gymnast will do it,--and Dr. Windship does it, taking only

every third round. Fancy a one-armed and legless hodman ascending the

under side of a ladder to the roof, and reflect on the conveniences of

gymnastic habits.

Here is a wooden horse; on this noble animal the Germans say that not

less than three hundred distinct feats can be performed. Bring yonder

spring-board, and we will try a few. Grasp these low pommels and vault

over the horse, first to the right, then again to the left; then with

one hand each way. Now spring to the top and stand; now spring between

the hands forward, now backward; now take a good impetus, spread your

feet far apart, and leap over it, letting go the hands. Grasp the

pommels again and throw a somerset over it,--coming down on your feet,

if the Fates permit. Now vault up and sit upon the horse, at one end,

knees the same side; now grasp the pommels and whirl yourself round

till you sit at the other end, facing the other way. Now spring up and

bestride it, whirl round till you bestride it the other way, at the

other end; do it once again, and, letting go your hand, seat yourself in

the saddle. Now push away the spring-board and repeat every feat without

its aid. Next, take a run and spring upon the end of the horse astride;

then walk over, supporting yourself on your hands alone, the legs not

touching; then backward, the same. It will be hard to balance yourself

at first, and you will careen uneasily one way or the other; no matter,

you will get over it somehow. Lastly, mount once more, kneel in the

saddle, and leap to the ground. It appears at first ridiculously

impracticable, the knees seem glued to their position, and it looks

as if one would fall inevitably on his face; but falling is hardly

possible. Any novice can do it, if he will only have faith. You shall

learn to do it from the horizontal bar presently, where it looks much

more formidable.

But first you must learn some simpler exercises on this horizontal bar:

you observe that it is made movable, and may be placed as low as your

knee, or higher than your hand can reach. This bar is only five inches

in circumference; but it is remarkably strong and springy, and therefore

we hope secure, though for some exercises our boys prefer to substitute

a larger one. Try and vault it, first to the right, then to the left, as

you did with the horse; try first with one hand, then see how high

you can vault with both. Now vault it between your hands, forward and

backward: the latter will baffle you, unless you have brought an unusual

stock of India-rubber in your frame, to begin with. Raise it higher

and higher, till you can vault it no longer. Now spring up on the bar,

resting on your palms, and vault over from that position with a swing of

your body, without touching the ground; when you have once managed this,

you can vault as high as you can reach: double-vaulting this is called.

Now put the bar higher than your head; grasp it with your hands, and

draw yourself up till you look over it; repeat this a good many times:

capital practice this, as is usually said of things particularly

tiresome. Take hold of the bar again, and with a good spring from the

ground try to curl your body over it, feet foremost. At first, in all

probability, your legs will go angling in the air convulsively, and come

down with nothing caught; but ere long we shall see you dispense with

the spring from the ground and go whirling over and over, as if the bar

were the axle of a wheel and your legs the spokes. Now spring upon the

bar, supporting yourself on your palms, as before; put your hands a

little farther apart, with the thumbs forward, then suddenly bring up

your knees on the bar and let your whole body go over forward: you will

not fall, if your hands have a good grasp. Try it again with your feet

outside your hands, instead of between them; then once again flinging

your body off from the bar and describing a long curve with it, arms

stiff: this is called the Giant's Swing. Now hang to the bar by the

knees,--by both knees; do not try it yet with one; then seize the bar

with your hands and thrust the legs still farther and farther forward,

pulling with your arms at the same time, till you find yourself sitting

unaccountably on the bar itself. This our boys cheerfully denominate

"skinning the cat," because the sensations it suggests, on a first

experiment, are supposed to resemble those of pussy with her skin drawn

over her head; but, after a few experiments, it seems like stroking the

fur in the right direction, and grows rather pleasant.

Try now the parallel bars, the most invigorating apparatus of the

gymnasium, and in its beginnings "accessible to the meanest capacity,"

since there are scarcely any who cannot support themselves by the hands

on the bars, and not very many who cannot walk a few steps upon the

palms, at the first trial. Soon you will learn to swing along these bars

in long surges of motion, forward and backward; to go through them, in

a series of springs from the hand only, without a jerk of the knees; to

turn round and round between them, going forward or backward all the

while; to vault over them and under them in complicated ways; to turn

somersets in them and across them; to roll over and over on them as

a porpoise seems to roll in the sea. Then come the "low-standing"

exercises, the grasshopper style of business; supporting yourself now

with arms not straight, but bent at the elbow, you shall learn to raise

and lower your body and to hold or swing yourself as lightly in that

position as if you had not felt pinioned and paralyzed hopelessly at the

first trial; and whole new systems of muscles shall seem to shoot out

from your shoulder-blades to enable you to do what you could not have

dreamed of doing before. These bars are magical,--they are conduits of

power; you cannot touch them, you cannot rest your weight on them in the

slightest degree, without causing strength to flow into your body as

naturally and irresistibly as water into the aqueduct-pipe when you turn

it on. Do you but give the opportunity, and every pulsation of blood

from your heart is pledged for the rest.

These exercises, and such as these, are among the elementary lessons of

gymnastic training. Practise these thoroughly and patiently, and you

will in time attain evolutions more complicated, and, if you wish, more

perilous. Neglect these, to grasp at random after everything which you

see others doing, and you will fail like a bookkeeper who is weak in

the multiplication-table. The older you begin, the more gradual the

preparation must be. A respectable middle-aged citizen, bent on

improving his _physique_, goes into a gymnasium, and sees slight,

smooth-faced boys going gayly through a series of exercises which show

their bodies to be a triumph, not a drag, and he is assured that the

same might be the case with him. Off goes the coat of our enthusiast and

in he plunges; he gripes a heavy dumb-bell and strains one shoulder,

hauls at a weight-box and strains the other, vaults the bar and bruises

his knee, swings in the rings once or twice till his hand slips and he

falls to the floor. No matter, he thinks the cause demands sacrifices;

but he subsides, for the next fifteen minutes, into more moderate

exercises, which he still makes immoderate by his awkward way of doing

them. Nevertheless, he goes home, cheerful under difficulties, and will

try again to-morrow. To-morrow finds him stiff, lame, and wretched; he

cannot lift his arm to his face to shave, nor lower it sufficiently to

pull his boots on; his little daughter must help him with his shoes,

and the indignant wife of his bosom must put on his hat, with that

ineffectual one-sidedness to which alone the best-regulated female mind

can attain, in this difficult part of costuming. His sorrows increase

as the day passes; the gymnasium alone can relieve them, but his soul

shudders at the remedy; and he can conceive of nothing so absurd as a

first gymnastic lesson, except a second one. But had he been wise enough

to place himself under an experienced adviser at the very beginning, he

would have been put through a few simple movements which would have sent

him home glowing and refreshed and fancying himself half-way back to

boyhood again; the slight ache and weariness of next day would have

been cured by next day's exercise; and after six months' patience, by a

progress almost imperceptible, he would have found himself, in respect

to strength and activity, a transformed man.

Most of these discomforts, of course, are spared to boys; their frames

are more elastic and less liable to ache and strain. They learn

gymnastics, as they learn everything else, more readily than their

elders. Begin with a boy early enough, and if he be of a suitable

temperament, he can learn in the gymnasium all the feats usually seen in

the circus-ring, and could even acquire more difficult ones, if it were

worth his while to try them. This is true even of the air-somersets and

hand-springs which are not so commonly cultivated by gymnasts; but it is

especially true of all exercises with apparatus. It is astonishing how

readily our classes pick up any novelty brought into town by a strolling

company,--holding the body out horizontally from an upright pole, or

hanging by the back of the head, or touching the head to the heels,

though this last is oftener tried than accomplished. They may be seen

practising these antics, at all spare moments, for weeks, until some

later hobby drives them away. From Blondin downwards, the public feats

derive a large part of their wonder from the imposing height in the air

at which they are done. Many a young man who can swing himself more

than his own length on the horizontal ladder at the gymnasium has yet

shuddered at _l'échelle périlleuse_ of the Hanlons; and I noticed that

even the simplest of their performances, such as holding by one hand, or

hanging by the knees, seemed perfectly terrific when done at a height

of twenty or thirty feet in the air, even to those who had done them a

hundred times at a lower level. It was the nerve that was astounding,

not the strength or skill; but the eye found it hard to draw the

distinction. So when a gymnastic friend of mine, crossing the

ocean lately, amused himself with hanging by one leg to the

mizzen-topmast-stay, the boldest sailors shuddered, though the feat

itself was nothing, save to the imagination.

Indeed, it is almost impossible for an inexperienced spectator to form

the slightest opinion as to the comparative difficulty or danger of

different exercises, since it is the test of merit to make the hardest

things look easy. Moreover, there may be a distinction between two

feats almost imperceptible to the eye,--a change, for instance, in the

position of the hands on a bar,--which may at once transform the thing

from a trifle to a wonder. An unpractised eye can no more appreciate

the difficulty of a gymnastic exercise by seeing it executed, than an

inexperienced ear, of the perplexities of a piece of music by hearing it

played.

The first effect of gymnastic exercise is almost always to increase the

size of the arms and the chest; and new-comers may commonly be known by

their frequent recourse to the tape-measure. The average increase among

the students of Harvard University during the first three months of the

gymnasium was nearly two inches in the chest, more than one inch in the

upper arm, and more than half an inch in the fore-arm. This was far

beyond what the unassisted growth of their age would account for; and

the increase is always very marked for a time, especially with thin

persons. In those of fuller habit the loss of flesh may counterbalance

the gain in muscle, so that size and weight remain the same; and in all

cases the increase stops after a time, and the subsequent change is

rather in texture than in volume. Mere size is no index of strength: Dr.

Windship is scarcely larger or heavier now than when he had not half his

present powers.

In the vigor gained by exercise there is nothing false or morbid; it

is as reliable as hereditary strength, except that it is more easily

relaxed by indolent habits. No doubt it is aggravating to see some

robust, lazy giant come into the gymnasium for the first time, and by

hereditary muscle shoulder a dumb-bell which all your training has

not taught you to handle. No matter; it is by comparing yourself with

yourself that the estimate is to be made. As the writing-master exhibits

with triumph to each departing pupil the uncouth copy which he wrote

on entering, so it will be enough to you, if you can appreciate your

present powers with your original inabilities. When you first joined the

gymnastic class, you could not climb yonder smooth mast, even with all

your limbs brought into service; now you can do it with your hands

alone. When you came, you could not possibly, when hanging by your hands

to the horizontal bar, raise your feet as high as your head,--nor could

you, with any amount of spring from the ground, curl your body over the

bar itself; now you can hang at arm's length and fling yourself over it

a dozen times in succession. At first, if you lowered yourself with bent

elbows between the parallel bars, you could not by any manoeuvre get up

again, but sank to the ground a hopeless wreck; now you can raise and

lower yourself an indefinite number of times. As for the weights and

clubs and dumb-bells, you feel as if there must be some jugglery about

them,--they have grown so much lighter than they used to be. It is you

who have gained a double set of muscles to every limb; that is all.

Strike out from the shoulder with your clenched hand; once your arm was

loose-jointed and shaky; now it is firm and tense, and begins to feel

like a natural arm. Moreover, strength and suppleness have grown

together; you have not stiffened by becoming stronger, but find yourself

more flexible. When you first came here, you could not touch your

fingers to the ground without bending the knees, and now you can place

your knuckles on the floor; then you could scarcely bend yourself

backward, and now you can lay the back of your head in a chair, or walk,

without crouching forward, under a bar less than three feet from

the ground. You have found, indeed, that almost every feat is done

originally by sheer strength, and then by agility, requiring very little

expenditure of force after the precise motion is hit upon; at first

labor, puffing, and a red face,--afterwards ease and the graces.

To a person who begins after the age of thirty or thereabouts, the

increase of strength and suppleness, of course, comes more slowly; yet

it comes as surely, and perhaps it is a more permanent acquisition, less

easily lost again, than in the softer frame of early youth. There is no

doubt that men of sixty have experienced a decided gain in strength and

health by beginning gymnastic exercises even at that age, as Socrates

learned to dance at seventy; and if they have practised similar

exercises all their lives, so much is added to their chance of

preserving physical youthfulness to the last. Jerome and Gabriel Ravel

are reported to have spent near three-score years on the planet which

their winged feet have so lightly trod; and who will dare to say how

many winters have passed over the head of the still young and graceful

Papanti?

Dr. Windship's most important experience is, that strength is to a

certain extent identical with health, so that every increase in muscular

development is an actual protection against disease. Americans, who are

ashamed to confess to doing the most innocent thing for the sake of mere

enjoyment, must be cajoled into every form of exercise under the plea of

health. Joining, the other day, in a children's dance, I was amused by a

solemn parent who turned to me, in the midst of a Virginia reel, still

conscientious, though breathless, and asked if I did not consider

dancing to be, on the whole, a _healthy_ exercise? Well, the gymnasium

is healthy; but the less you dwell on that fact, the better, after you

have once entered it. If it does you good, you will enjoy it; and if

you enjoy it, it will do you good. With body, as with soul, the highest

experience merges duty in pleasure. The better one's condition is, the

less one has to think about growing better, and the more unconsciously

one's natural instincts guide the right way.

When ill, we eat to support life; when well, we eat because the food

tastes good. It is a merit of the gymnasium, that, when properly taken,

it makes one forget to think about health or anything else that is

troublesome; "a man remembereth neither sorrow nor debt"; cares must be

left outside, be they physical or metaphysical, like canes at the door

of a museum.

No doubt, to some it grows tedious. It shares this objection with all

means of exercise. To be an American is to hunger for novelty; and all

instruments and appliances, especially, require constant modification:

we are dissatisfied with last winter's skates, with the old boat, and

with the family pony. So the zealot finds the gymnasium insufficient

long before he has learned half the moves. To some temperaments it

becomes a treadmill, and that, strangely enough, to diametrically

opposite temperaments. A lethargic youth, requiring great effort to keep

himself awake between the exercises, thinks the gymnasium slow, because

he is; while an eager, impetuous young fellow, exasperated because

he cannot in a fortnight draw himself up by one hand, finds the same

trouble there as elsewhere, that the laws of Nature are not fast enough

for his inclinations. No one without energy, no one without patience,

can find permanent interest in a gymnasium; but with these qualities,

and a modest willingness to live and learn, I do not see why one should

ever grow tired of the moderate use of its apparatus. For one, I really

never enter it without exhilaration, or leave it without a momentary

regret: there are always certain special new things on the docket for

trial; and when those are settled, there will be something more. It is

amazing what a variety of interest can be extracted from those few bits

of wood and rope and iron. There is always somebody in advance, some

"man on horseback" on a wooden horse, some India-rubber hero, some

slight and powerful fellow who does with ease what you fail to do with

toil, some terrible Dr. Windship with an ever-waxing dumb-bell. The

interest becomes semi-professional. A good gymnast enjoys going into

a new and well-appointed establishment, precisely as a sailor enjoys

a well-rigged ship; every rope and spar is scanned with intelligent

interest; "we know the forest round us as seamen know the sea." The

pupils talk gymnasium as some men talk horse. A particularly smooth

and flexible horizontal pole, a desirable pair of parallel bars, a

remarkably elastic spring-board,--these are matters of personal pride,

and described from city to city with loving enthusiasm. The gymnastic

apostle rises to eloquence in proportion to the height of the

handswings, and points his climax to match the peak-ladders.

An objection frequently made to the gymnasium, and especially by anxious

parents, is the supposed danger of accident. But this peril is obviously

inseparable from all physical activity. If a man never leaves his house,

the chances undoubtedly are, that he will never break his leg, unless

upon the stairway; but if he is always to stay in the house, he might

as well have no legs at all. Certainly we incur danger every time we go

outside the front-door; but to remain always on the inside would prove

the greatest danger of the whole. When a man slips in the street and

dislocates his arm, we do not warn him against walking, but against

carelessness. When a man is thrown from his horse and gratifies the

surgeons by a beautiful case of compound fracture, we do not advise him

to avoid a riding-school, but to go to one. Trivial accidents are not

uncommon in the gymnasium, severe ones are rare, fatal ones almost

unheard-of,--which is far more than can be said of riding, driving,

hunting, boating, skating, or even "coasting" on a sled. Learning

gymnastics is like learning to swim,--you incur a small temporary risk

for the sake of acquiring powers that will lessen your risks in the end.

Your increased strength and agility will carry you past many unseen

perils hereafter, and the invigorated tone of your system will make

accidents less important, if they happen. Some trifling sprain causes

lameness for life, some slight blow brings on wasting disease, to

a person whose health is merely negative, not positive,--while a

well-trained frame throws it off in twenty-four hours. It is almost

proverbial of the gymnasium, that it cures its own wounds.

A minor objection is, that these exercises are not performed in the

open air. In summer, however, they may be, and in winter and in stormy

weather it is better that they should not be. Extreme cold is not

favorable to them; it braces, but stiffens; and the bars and ropes

become slippery and even dangerous. In Germany it is common to have a

double set of apparatus, out-doors and in-doors; and this would always

be desirable, but for the increased expense. Moreover, the gymnasium

should be taken in addition to out-door exercise, giving, for instance,

an hour a day to each, one for training, the other for oxygen. I know

promising gymnasts whose pallid complexions show that their blood is not

worthy of their muscle, and they will break down. But these cases are

rare, for the reason already hinted,--that nothing gives so good an

appetite for out-door life as this indoor activity. It alternates

admirably with skating, and seduces irresistibly into walking or rowing

when spring arrives.

My young friend Silverspoon, indeed, thinks that a good trot on a fast

horse is worth all the gymnastics in the world. But I learn, on inquiry,

that my young friend's mother is constantly imploring him to ride in

order to air her horses. It is a beautiful parental trait; but for those

born horseless, what an economical substitute is the wooden quadruped of

the gymnasium! Our Autocrat has well said, that the livery-stable horse

is "a profligate animal"; and I do not wonder that the Centaurs of old

should be suspected of having originated spurious coin. Undoubtedly it

was to pay for the hire of their own hoofs.

For young men in cities, too, the facilities for exercise are limited

not only by money, but by time. They must commonly take it after dark.

It is every way a blessing, when the gymnasium divides their evenings

with the concert, the book, or the public meeting. Then there is no

time left, and small temptation, for pleasures less pure. It gives an

innocent answer to that first demand for evening excitement which perils

the soul of the homeless boy in the seductive city. The companions whom

he meets at the gymnasium are not the ones whose pursuits of later

nocturnal hours entice him to sin. The honest fatigue of his exercises

calls for honest rest. It is the nervous exhaustion of a sedentary,

frivolous, or joyless life which madly tries to restore itself by the

other nervous exhaustion of debauchery. It is an old prescription,--

"Multa tulit fecitque puer, sudavit et alsit,

_Abstinuit venere et vino_."

There is another class of critics whose cant is simply can't, and who,

being unable or unwilling to surrender themselves to these simple

sources of enjoyment, are grandiloquent upon the dignity of manhood,

and the absurdity of full-grown men in playing monkey-tricks with their

bodies. Full-grown men? There is not a person in the world who can

afford to be a "full-grown man" through all the twenty-four hours. There

is not one who does not need, more than he needs his dinner, to have

habitually one hour in the day when he throws himself with boyish

eagerness into interests as simple as those of boys. No church or state,

no science or art, can feed us all the time; some morsels there must be

of simpler diet, some moments of unadulterated play. But dignity? Alas

for that poor soul whose dignity must be "preserved,"--preserved in

the right culinary sense, as fruits which are growing dubious in their

natural state are sealed up in jars to make their acidity presentable!

"There's beggary in the love that can be reckoned," and degradation in

the dignity that has to be preserved. Simplicity is the only dignity. If

one has not the genuine article, no affluence of starch, no snow-drift

of white-linen decency, will furnish any substitute. If one has it, he

will retain it, whether he stand on his head or his heels. Nothing

is really undignified but affectation or conceit; and for the total

extinction and annihilation of every vestige of these, there are few

things so effectual as athletic exercises.

Still another objection is that of the medical men, that the gymnasium,

as commonly used, is not a specific prescription for the special disease

of the patient. But setting aside the claims of the system of applied

gymnastics, which Ling and his followers have so elaborated, it is

enough to answer, that the one great fundamental disorder of all

Americans is simply nervous exhaustion, and that for this the gymnasium

can never be misdirected, though it may be used to excess. Of course one

can no more cure over-work of brain by over-work of body than one

can restore a wasted candle by lighting it at the other end. But by

subtracting an hour a day from the present amount of purely intellectual

fatigue, and inserting that quantum of bodily fatigue in its place, you

begin an immediate change in your conditions of life. Moreover, the

great object is not merely to get well, but to keep well. The exhaustion

of over-work can almost always be cured by a water-cure, or by a voyage,

which is a salt-water cure; but the problem is, how to make the whole

voyage of life perpetually self-curative. Without this, there is

perpetual dissatisfaction and chronic failure. Emerson well says, "Each

class fixes its eye on the advantages it has not,--the refined on rude

strength, the democrat on birth and breeding." This is the aim of the

gymnasium, to give to the refined this rude strength, or its better

substitute, refined strength. It is something to secure to the student

or the clerk the strong muscles, hearty appetite, and sound sleep of the

sailor and the ploughman,--to enable him, if need be, to out-row the

fisherman, and out-run the mountaineer, and lift more than his porter,

and to remember head-ache and dyspepsia only as he recalls the primeval

whooping-cough of his childhood. I am one of those who think that the

Autocrat rides his hobby of the pavements a little too far; but it is

useless to deny, that, within the last few years of gymnasiums and

boat-clubs, the city has been gaining on the country, in physical

development. Here in our town we had all the city- and college-boys

assembled in July to see the regattas, and all the country-boys in

September to see the thousand-dollar base-ball match; and it was

impossible to deny, whatever one's theories, that the physical

superiority lay for the time being with the former.

The secret is, that, though the country offers to farmers more oxygen

than to anybody in the city, yet not all dwellers in the country are

farmers, and even those who are such are suffering from other causes,

being usually the very last to receive those lessons of food and

clothing and bathing and ventilation which have their origin in cities.

Physical training is not a mechanical, but a vital process: no bricks

without straw; no good _physique_ without good materials and conditions.

The farmer knows, that, to rear a premium colt or calf, he must oversee

every morsel that it eats, every motion it makes, every breath it

draws,--must guard against over-work and under-work, cold and heat, wet

and dry. He remembers it for the quadrupeds, but he forgets it for his

children, his wife, and himself: so his cattle deserve a premium, and

his family does not.

Neglect is the danger of the country; the peril of the city is in living

too fast. All mental excitement acts as a stimulant, and, like all

stimulants, debilitates when taken in excess. This explains the

unnatural strength and agility of the insane, always followed by

prostration; and even moderate cerebral excitement produces similar

results, so far as it goes. Quetelet discovered that sometimes after

lecturing, or other special intellectual action, he could perform

gymnastic feats impossible to him at other times. The fact is

unquestionable; and it is also certain that an extreme in this direction

has precisely the contrary effect, and is fatal to the physical

condition. One may spring up from a task of moderate mental labor with a

sense of freedom like a bow let loose; but after an immoderate task

one feels like the same bow too long bent, flaccid, nerveless, all the

elasticity gone. Such fatigue is far more overwhelming than any mere

physical exhaustion. I have lounged into the gymnasium, after an

afternoon's skating, supposing myself quite tired, and have found myself

in excellent condition; and I have gone in after an hour or two of some

specially concentrated anxiety or thought, without being aware that

the body was at all fatigued, and found it good for nothing. Such

experiences are invaluable; all the libraries cannot so illustrate the

supremacy of immaterial forces. Thought, passion, purpose, expectation,

absorbed attention even, all feed upon the body's powers; let them

act one atom too intensely or one moment too long, and this wondrous

physical organization finds itself drained of its forces to support

them. It does not seem strange that strong men should have died by a

single ecstasy of emotion too convulsive, when we bear within us this

tremendous engine whose slightest pulsation so throbs in every fibre of

our frame.

The relation between mental culture and physical powers is a subject of

the greatest interest, as yet but little touched, because so few of our

physiologists have been practical gymnasts. Nothing is more striking

than the tendency of all athletic exercises, when brought to perfection,

to eliminate mere brute bulk from the competition, and give the palm

to more subtile qualities, agility, quickness, a good eye, a ready

hand,--in short, superior fineness of organization. Any clown can learn

the military manual exercise; but it needs brain-power to drill with

the Zouaves. Even a prize-fight tests strength less than activity and

"science." The game of base-ball, as played in our boyhood, was a

simple, robust, straightforward contest, where the hardest hitter

was the best man; but it is every year becoming perfected into a

sleight-of-hand, like cricket; mere strength is now almost valueless

in playing it, and it calls rather for the qualities of the

billiard-player. In the last champion-match at Worcester, nearly the

whole time was consumed in skilful feints and parryings, and it took

five days to make fifty runs. And these same characteristics mark

gymnastic exercises above all; men of great natural strength are very

apt to be too slow and clumsy for them, and the most difficult feats

are usually done by persons of comparatively delicate _physique_ and a

certain artistic organization. It is this predominance of the nervous

temperament which is yet destined to make American gymnasts the foremost

in the world.

Indeed, the gymnasium is as good a place for the study of human nature

as any. The perpetual analogy of mind and body can be appreciated only

where both are trained with equal system. In both departments the great

prizes are not won by the most astounding special powers, but by a

certain harmonious adaptation. There is a physical tact, as there is

a mental tact. Every process is accomplished by using just the right

stress at just the right moment; but no two persons are alike in the

length of time required for these little discoveries. Gymnastic genius

lies in gaining at the first trial what will cost weeks of perseverance

to those less happily gifted. And as the close elastic costume which is

worn by the gymnast, or should be worn, allows no merit or defect of

figure to be concealed, so the close contact of emulation exhibits all

the varieties of temperament. One is made indolent by success, and

another is made ardent; one is discouraged by failure, and another

aroused by it; one does everything best the first time and slackens ever

after, while another always begins at the bottom and always climbs to

the top.

One of the most enjoyable things in these mimic emulations is this

absolute genuineness in their gradations of success. In the great world

outside, there is no immediate and absolute test for merit. There are

cliques and puffings and jealousies, quarrels of authors, tricks of

trade, caucusing in politics, hypocrisy among the deacons. We distrust

the value of others' successes, they distrust ours, and we all sometimes

distrust our own. There are those who believe in Shakspeare, and those

who believe in Tupper. All merit is measured by sliding scales, and each

has his own theory of the sliding. In a dozen centuries it will all come

right, no doubt. In the mean time there is vanity in one half the world

and vexation of spirit in the other half, and each man joins each half

in turn. But once enter the charmed gate of the gymnasium, and you leave

shams behind. Though you be saint or sage, no matter, the inexorable

laws of gravitation are around you. If you flinch, you fail; if you

slip, you fall. That bar, that rope, that weight shall test you

absolutely. Can you handle it, it is well; but if not, stand aside for

him who can. You may have every other gift and grace, it counts for

nothing; he, not you, is the man for the hour. The code of Spanish

aristocracy is slight and flexible compared with this rigid precedence.

It is Emerson's Astraea. Each registers himself, and there is no appeal.

No use to kick and struggle, no use to apologize. Do not say that

to-night you are tired, last night you felt ill. These excuses may serve

for a day, but no longer. A slight margin is allowed for moods and

variations, but it is not great after all. One revels in this Palace

of Truth. Defeat itself is a satisfaction, before a tribunal of such

absolute justice.

This contributes to that healthful ardor with which, in these exercises,

a man forgets the things which are behind and presses forward to fresh

achievements. This perpetually saves from vanity; for everything seems

a trifle, when you have once attained to it. The aim which yesterday

filled your whole gymnastic horizon you overtake and pass as a boat

passes a buoy: until passed, it was a goal; when passed, a mere speck in

the horizon. Yesterday you could swing yourself three rounds upon the

horizontal ladder; to-day, after weeks of effort, you have suddenly

attained to the fourth, and instantly all that long laborious effort

vanishes, to be formed again between you and the fifth round: five, five

is the only goal for heroic labor to-day; and when five is attained,

there will be six, and so on while the Arabic numerals hold out. A

childish aim, no doubt; but is not this what we all recognize as the

privilege of childhood, to obtain exaggerated enjoyment from little

things? When you have come to the really difficult feats of the

gymnasium,--when you have conquered the "barber's curl" and the

"peg-pole,"--when you can draw yourself up by one arm, and perform the

"giant's swing" over and over, without changing hands, and vault the

horizontal bar as high as you can reach it,--when you can vault across

the high parallel bars between your hands backward, or walk through them

on your palms with your feet in the vicinity of the ceiling,--then you

will reap the reward of your past labors, and may begin to call yourself

a gymnast.

It is pleasant to think, that, so great is the variety of exercises in

the gymnasium, even physical deficiencies and deformities do not wholly

exclude from its benefits. I have seen an invalid girl, so lame from

childhood that she could not stand without support, whose general health

had been restored, and her bust and arms made a study for a sculptor, by

means of gymnastics. Nay, there are odd compensations of Nature by which

even exceptional formations may turn to account in athletic exercises. A

squinting eye is a treasure to a boxer, a left-handed batter is a prize

in a cricketing eleven, and one of the best gymnasts in Chicago is an

individual with a wooden leg, which he takes off at the commencement

of affairs, thus economizing weight and stowage, and performing

achievements impossible except to unipeds.

In the enthusiasm created by this emulation, there is necessarily some

danger of excess. Dr. Windship approves of exercising only every other

day in the gymnasium; but as most persons take their work in a more

diluted form than his, they can afford to repeat it daily, unless warned

by headache or languor that they are exceeding their allowance. There

is no good in excess; our constitutions cannot be hurried. The law is

universal, that exercise strengthens as long as nutrition balances it,

but afterwards wastes the very forces it should increase. We cannot make

bricks faster than Nature supplies us with straw.

It is one good evidence of the increasing interest in these exercises,

that the American gymnasiums built during the past year or two have far

surpassed all their predecessors in size and completeness, and have

probably no superiors in the world. The Seventh Regiment Gymnasium in

New York, just opened by Mr. Abner S. Brady, is one hundred and eighty

feet by fifty-two, in its main hall, and thirty-five feet in height,

with nearly a thousand pupils. The beautiful hall of the Metropolitan

Gymnasium, in Chicago, measures one hundred and eight feet by eighty,

and is twenty feet high at the sides, with a dome in the centre, forty

feet high, and the same in diameter. Next to these probably rank the

new gymnasium at Cincinnati, the Tremont Gymnasium at Boston, and the

Bunker-Hill Gymnasium at Charlestown, all recently opened. Of college

institutions the most complete are probably those at Cambridge and New

Haven,--the former being eighty-five feet by fifty, and the latter one

hundred feet by fifty, in external dimensions. The arrangements for

instruction are rather more systematic at Harvard, but Yale has several

valuable articles of apparatus--as the rack-bars and the series

of rings--which have hardly made their appearance, as yet, in

Massachusetts, though considered indispensable in New York.

Gymnastic exercises are as yet but very sparingly introduced into our

seminaries, primary or professional, though a great change is already

beginning. Frederick the Great complained of the whole Prussian

school-system of his day, because it assumed that men were originally

created for students and clerks, whereas his Majesty argued that the

very shape of the human body rather proved them to be meant by Nature

for postilions. Until lately all our educational plans have assumed man

to be a merely sedentary being; we have employed teachers of music and

drawing to go from school to school to teach those elegant arts, but

have had none to teach the art of health. Accordingly, the pupils have

exhibited more complex curves in their spines than they could possibly

portray on the blackboard, and acquired such discords in their nervous

systems as would have utterly disgraced their singing. It is something

to have got beyond the period when active sports were actually

prohibited. I remember when there was but one boat owned by a Cambridge

student,--the owner was the first of his class, by the way, to get his

name into capitals in the "Triennial Catalogue" afterwards,--and that

boat was soon reported to have been suppressed by the Faculty, on the

plea that there was a college law against a student's keeping domestic

animals, and a boat was a domestic animal within the meaning of the

statute. Manual labor was thought less reprehensible; but schools on

this basis have never yet proved satisfactory, because either the hands

or the brains have always come off second-best from the effort to

combine: it is a law of Nature, that after a hard day's work one does

not need more work, but play. But in many of the German common-schools

one or two hours are given daily to gymnastic exercises with apparatus,

with sometimes the addition of Wednesday or Saturday afternoon; and this

was the result, as appears from Gutsmuth's book, of precisely the same

popular reaction against a purely intellectual system which is visible

in our community now. In the French military school at Joinville, the

degree of Bachelor of Agility is formally conferred; but Horace Mann's

remark still holds good, that it is seldom thought necessary to train

men's bodies for any purpose except to destroy those of other men.

However, in view of the present wise policy of our leading colleges,

we shall have to stop croaking before long, especially as enthusiastic

alumni already begin to fancy a visible improvement in the _physique_ of

graduating classes on Commencement Day.

It would be unpardonable, in this connection, not to speak a good word

for the hobby of the day,--Dr. Lewis, and his system of gymnastics, or,

more properly, of calisthenics. Aside from a few amusing games, there is

nothing very novel in the "system," except the man himself. Dr. Windship

had done all that was needed in apostleship of severe exercises, and

there was wanting some man with a milder hobby, perfectly safe for a

lady to drive. The Fates provided that man, also, in Dr. Lewis,--so

hale and hearty, so profoundly confident in the omnipotence of his own

methods and the uselessness of all others, with such a ready invention,

and such an inundation of animal spirits that he could flood any

company, no matter how starched or listless, with an unbounded appetite

for ball-games and bean-games. How long it will last in the hands of

others than the projector remains to be seen, especially as some of his

feats are more exhausting than average gymnastics; but, in the mean

time, it is just what is wanted for multitudes of persons who find or

fancy the real gymnasium to be unsuited to them. It will especially

render service to female pupils, so far as they practise it; for the

accustomed gymnastic exercises seem never yet to have been rendered

attractive to them, on any large scale, and with any permanency. Girls,

no doubt, learn as readily as boys to row, to skate, and to swim,--any

muscular inferiority being perhaps counterbalanced in swimming by

their greater physical buoyancy, in skating by their dancing-school

experience, and in rowing by their music-lessons enabling them more

promptly to fall into regular time,--though these suggestions may all be

fancies rather than facts. The same points help them, perhaps, in the

lighter calisthenic exercises; but when they come to the apparatus, one

seldom sees a girl who takes hold like a boy: it, perhaps, requires a

certain ready capital of muscle, at the outset, which they have not at

command, and which it is tedious to acquire afterwards. Yet there seem

to be some cases, as with the classes of Mrs. Molineaux at Cambridge,

where a good deal of gymnastic enthusiasm is created among female

pupils, and it may be, after all, that the deficiency lies thus far in

the teachers.

Experience is already showing that the advantages of school-gymnasiums

go deeper than was at first supposed. It is not to be the whole object

of American education to create scholars or idealists, but to produce

persons of a solid strength,--persons who, to use the most expressive

Western phrase that ever was coined into five monosyllables, "will do to

tie to"; whereas to most of us it would be absurd to tie anything but

the Scriptural millstone. In the military school of Brienne, the only

report appended to the name of the little Napoleon Bonaparte was "Very

healthy"; and it is precisely this class of boys for whom there is least

place in a purely intellectual institution. A child of immense animal

activity and unlimited observing faculties, personally acquainted with

every man, child, horse, dog, in the township,--intimate in the families

of oriole and grasshopper, pickerel and turtle,--quick of hand and

eye,--in short, born for practical leadership and victory,--such a boy

finds no provision for him in most of our seminaries, and must, by his

constitution, be either truant or torment. The theory of the institution

ignores such aptitudes as his, and recognizes no merits save those of

some small sedentary linguist or mathematician,--a blessing to his

teacher, but an object of watchful anxiety to the family physician, and

whose career was endangering not only his health, but his humility.

Introduce now some athletic exercises as a regular part of the

school-drill, instantly the rogue finds his legitimate sphere, and leads

the class; he is no longer an outcast, no longer has to look beyond the

school for companions and appreciation; while, on the other hand, the

youthful pedant, no longer monopolizing superiority, is brought down to

a proper level. Presently comes along some finer fellow than either, who

cultivates all his faculties, and is equally good at spring-board and

black-board; and straightway, since every child wishes to be a Crichton,

the whole school tries for the combination of merits, and the grade of

the juvenile community is perceptibly raised.

What is true of childhood is true of manhood also. What a shame it is

that even Kingsley should fall into the cant of deploring maturity as a

misfortune, and declaring that our freshest pleasures come "before

the age of fourteen"! Health is perpetual youth,--that is, a state of

positive health. Merely negative health, the mere keeping out of the

hospital for a series of years, is not health. Health is to feel the

body a luxury, as every vigorous child does,--as the bird does when it

shoots and quivers through the air, not flying for the sake of the goal,

but for the sake of the flight,--as the dog does when he scours madly

across the meadow, or plunges into the muddy blissfulness of the

stream. But neither dog nor bird nor child enjoys his cup of physical

happiness--let the dull or the worldly say what they will--with a

felicity so cordial as the educated palate of conscious manhood. To

"feel one's life in every limb," this is the secret bliss of which all

forms of athletic exercise are merely varying disguises; and it is

absurd to say that we cannot possess this when character is mature, but

only when it is half-developed. As the flower is better than the bud, so

should the fruit be better than the flower.

We need more examples of a mode of living which shall not alone be a

success in view of some ulterior object, but which shall be, in its

nobleness and healthfulness, successful every moment as it passes on.

Navigating a wholly new temperament through history, this American race

must of course form its own methods and take nothing at second-hand; but

the same triumphant combination of bodily and mental training which made

human life beautiful in Greece, strong in Rome, simple and joyous in

Germany, truthful and brave in England, must yet be moulded to a higher

quality amid this varying climate and on these low shores. The regions

of the world most garlanded with glory and romance, Attica, Provence,

Scotland, were originally more barren than Massachusetts; and there is

yet possible for us such an harmonious mingling of refinement and vigor,

that we may more than fulfil the world's expectation, and may become

classic to ourselves.

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