September 28, not on the site originally selected, but in Washington
Gardens, at the corner of West and Tremont Streets, opposite the Common.
A notice in the _American Journal of Education_ for October mentions “the
large number of pupils of various ages, and the high gratification it
seems to afford;” and the November number of the same Journal uses these
words, in the course of a more extended reference: “A month’s opportunity
of observing its progress and participating in its exercises enables us
now to say that thus far it gives the utmost satisfaction to those who
have made the experiment of taking a course of lessons. The physical
effects of the gymnastic exercise, on pupils of very different ages—from
ten to fifty—are surprising. Many have doubled their vigor.... Pupils
belong to great diversity of situations in life—physicians, lawyers, and
clergymen are intermixed with young men from the counter and the counting
house, and with boys from the public schools.” Follen was assisted by
George F. Turner, a Harvard student. Mrs. Follen, then Miss Eliza Lee
Cabot, first met her future husband in the autumn of 1826. She says: “He
accompanied us and some other ladies to his gymnasium, to see his class
of boys go through their exercises. He took us, when we first entered the
place, to look at a very amusing caricature of his school, particularly
of his elder pupils and himself, in the act of performing some of their
most difficult exercises.”[200]
In June of the following year (1827) Follen resigned his position at
the Boston Gymnasium. To a committee of pupils there, who sent him a
letter[201] expressing their appreciation of his services and their
regret at losing him, he replied under date of July 3, referring to “the
patriotic views to which the Boston Gymnasium owes its existence, and
the efficient zeal with which these exercises have been carried on.”
Meanwhile an attempt had been made to secure the services of no less a
person than Friedrich Ludwig Jahn himself. Dr. Warren tells us[202] that
he “addressed a letter to the distinguished philosopher and gymnasiarch,
Professor Jahn, through my friend, William Amory, Esq., who was at that
time residing in Germany. Mr. Jahn was so situated that we could not,
without obtaining more means than were at our disposition, lead him to
abandon his own country and establish himself for life in ours. The
idea of obtaining his aid was therefore relinquished; and I afterwards
addressed Dr. Lieber....”
[Illustration: FIG. 69.—Francis Lieber (1800-1872). (From Harley’s
“Francis Lieber”).]
This latter gentleman, who succeeded Follen at the Boston gymnasium
late in June or early in July of 1827, was Francis (German, _Franz_)
Lieber, born in Berlin on March 18, 1800. In 1811 he became acquainted
with Jahn, at the Hasenheide _Turnplatz_. Although too young to join
his older brothers in the first campaign of the War of Liberation,
upon Napoleon’s return from Elba he entered (May 26, 1815) a volunteer
regiment, the Pomeranian Rifles or Kolberg Regiment, took part in the
battle of Ligny, was severely wounded at Namur, and later suffered from
a prolonged siege of typhus fever in the hospitals at Aix-la-Chapelle
and Cologne. After his return home he attended for a time the _Gymnasium
zum grauen Kloster_, and now became one of the most ardent and tireless
of Jahn’s turners, accompanying him on the month-long excursions to the
Island of Rügen in 1817 and to Breslau the following year.[203] In July
of 1819, a few days after Jahn’s arrest, Lieber was also seized as an
enemy of the state. After four months in prison he was allowed to go
free, but forbidden to study in any Prussian university. The universities
of Heidelberg and Tübingen also refused him admission, but he met with
better success at Jena, where he received his doctor’s degree (Ph.D.)
in 1820, studying afterwards for brief periods in Halle and Dresden
(1821). In December of that year Lieber joined at Marseilles a band of
Philhellenes, who sailed from that port to give their services in the
cause of freedom to a foreign race, since the reaction at home left
no opportunity there for patriotic endeavor; but disgusted with the
cowardice, incapacity, and lying met at every step in Greece, he returned
in a small vessel to Ancona, on the eastern coast of Italy, reached Rome
about the first of June, and spent the next year as private tutor in the
family of Barthold Georg Niebuhr, the celebrated German historian, at
that time Prussian ambassador at the Papal Court.
The Prussian King, and later Kamptz, the Minister of Police, had assured
Lieber that no further persecution need be feared in his own country,
and for some months after his return to Berlin, which he reached August
10, 1823, it seemed as though all was well. But in time it appeared
that every movement was watched by the police. Foreseeing the fate that
awaited him if he remained longer in Germany, he now took steps looking
toward a career in some foreign land. Lessons in English were begun in
February of 1826, and among other things he secured from Major-General
von Pfuel, in charge of a swimming school in Berlin, a testimonial as to
his skill in that art and his ability to conduct a similar institution
with success. When all was ready he left Berlin, May 17, 1826, and ten
days later reached London, travelling by way of Hamburg and Gravesend.
Although he passed a year in the English metropolis, supporting himself
by private instruction in German and Italian at six shillings a lesson,
Lieber’s thoughts were soon turned from this uncertain means of
livelihood to the possibility of a career in the United States. As early
as August his diary contains this entry: “Mrs. Austin, the authoress,
introduced me to Mr. Bentham, and to Mr. Neal” (p. 248). The _American
Journal of Education_ for November of that year (Vol. I, pp. 699-701)
quotes as follows from “a recent letter of our literary countryman Mr.
Neal, who has taken a very active part in aiding the interests of Prof.
Voelker’s establishment in London, and to whose attention we have been
repeatedly indebted for intelligence on gymnastics”: ‘You know my zeal
about gymnastics. I have been heartily engaged for above a year in the
study and practice of them in every variety; and under a hope that I
may be of use to my countrymen. I have found three men who I am told
are qualified, almost beyond example, for teachers. I enclose you the
proposals and the certificate of one, who was a chief personage with
professor Jahn himself.’
The certificate of Professor Jahn: “Francis Lieber, Doctor in Philosophy,
has during several successive years, both in summer and winter, gone
through the whole course of gymnastic exercises in the gymnasium over
which I, the undersigned, presided; he has also accompanied me in several
pedestrian excursions, among others in 1817 to the Island of Rügen,
and in 1818 to the Riesen mountains, on which travels we visited many
Prussian gymnasiums. Having found him of good moral behavior, ingenious
and clever, and being a good leader and teacher of gymnastics, I thought
it right as early as the year 1817 to propose him to the government of
the Rhenish Provinces at Aix la Chapelle for the situation of a teacher
of gymnastic exercises. Beloved by the young scholars, esteemed and
respected by those of the same or a more advanced age than himself, he
was elected a member of the committee which was intended to represent
the society of ‘Turners’ and to promote the art generally, with a view
as well to the art itself as to morals and science. At the time when Dr.
Lieber was daily with me he zealously adhered to those eternal maxims
of truth, duty, and liberty which form the only basis of the progress
of human kind. The journeys which he has performed through Germany,
Switzerland, to France, Italy, and Greece, have no doubt still farther
formed his understanding and enlarged his mind; but on this point I
cannot judge from my own knowledge, having since lost sight of him
although he lives in my recollection. At the request of Dr. Lieber I
have given this testimonial, stamped according to law, written with my
own hand, with my seal affixed and certified by the municipality of my
present abode. Freiburg on the Unstrut, in the Prussian Duchy of Saxony.
August 1, 1826. (Signed) Frederick Lewis Jahn, Doctor in Philosophy.”
“In addition to the above,” the Editor of the _Journal_ concludes, “Dr.
Lieber has a very satisfactory certificate from Major General Pfuel, who
invented the new method of teaching to swim and established the Prussian
Military Swimming Schools. It may be proper to add that Dr. Lieber is
known and approved by Dr. Follen, Professor (!) of civil law in Harvard
University and Superintendent of the gymnasium in Boston.”
April 13, 1827, in response to an invitation just received, Lieber wrote
accepting a position as Follen’s successor at the Boston Gymnasium, and
agreeing to establish a swimming school in that city. June 20 of the
same year he landed in New York City, and proceeded at once to the scene
of his new duties. The _Boston Medical Intelligencer_ of July 3 (Vol.
V, p. 118) announces his arrival “to take charge of the gymnasium in
Washington Garden and to open a swimming school;” and an advertisement in
the same journal, dated July 14, gives notice that “Dr. Lieber’s Swimming
School, situate on the north side of the Mill Dam, will be opened for the
reception of pupils on Wednesday next, 18th inst....” The swimming school
seems to have proved a successful venture from the start, and was still
in existence at least as late as the season of 1832. The popularity of
the gymnasium, on the other hand, soon waned. From a sketch of the life
of William Bentley Fowle contained in Barnard’s _American Journal of
Education_ for 1861 (Vol. X, p. 607) we learn that “about four hundred
gentlemen attended at the opening term. Mr. Fowle was chosen treasurer,
and was in fact the chief executive officer. When Dr. Follen resigned
Dr. Lieber was invited over from London; but no talent could keep the
gymnasium alive after the novelty had ceased, and some of the gymnasts
had been caricatured in the print shops. The institution lingered about
two years, when, only about four gymnasts remaining, Mr. Fowle closed its
accounts.”[204]
Beck left the Round Hill School in 1830, to take part in establishing
another boys’ school, in Phillipstown, on the Hudson River opposite West
Point. Two years later he was elected “University Professor of Latin,
and Permanent Tutor,” in Harvard University, and for eighteen years
discharged the duties of that position in a manner which won the respect
and affectionate regard of pupils and colleagues. Upon resigning his
chair, and until his death, which occurred suddenly on March 19, 1866, he
was occupied with literary pursuits and classical studies, and also held
various offices of public trust, representing Cambridge for two years
in the State Legislature.[205] Bancroft, too, had withdrawn from the
school at Northampton in 1830.[206] For some years longer, in the face
of financial losses and in spite of failing health, Cogswell struggled
to maintain its efficiency. In the spring of 1834 he finally gave up the
attempt, and after two years at the head of a boys’ school near Raleigh,
North Carolina, turned his back forever on a profession in which he had
been in many ways singularly successful.
Follen, as we have seen, resigned his position at the Boston gymnasium
early in the summer of 1827; the title “Superintendent of the Gymnasium”
at Harvard is given him only in the catalogue for 1827-1828, which also
contains the last reference to “gymnastick exercises.” August 21, 1828,
the Corporation of Harvard College appointed him “Instructor in Ethics
and in Civil and Ecclesiastical History” in the Theological School,
in addition to his work in the College. Two years later he received a
five-year appointment as Professor of the German Language and Literature,
three friends having guaranteed a portion of his salary for that period.
The professorship was not renewed in 1835, and his connection with the
University came to an end. In the summer of 1833 he became interested
in the Anti-slavery Society which had been formed the year previous
in Boston, and soon joined it, assisting later in the formation of a
similar society in Cambridge, and at one time serving as a manager of
the Massachusetts Society. As early as the winter of 1826-1827 he formed
the acquaintance of Dr. William Ellery Channing, and decided to prepare
himself for the ministry with the assistance of that distinguished
Unitarian clergyman. On January 13, 1840, three days after completing
a well-attended course of six lectures on German literature under the
auspices of the Merchants’ Library Association of New York, he left that
city for Boston on the steamboat “Lexington.” About fifty miles out, on
the Sound, the vessel caught fire, and Follen, together with all but
four of the crew and passengers, met his death. Charles Sumner, who had
been his pupil, wrote to a friend “Dr. Follen is gone; able, virtuous,
learned, good, with a heart throbbing to all that is honest and humane;”
and Dr. Channing “said of him that he was, on the whole, the best man he
had ever known.”[207]
The career of Francis Lieber in the United States was more notable than
those of either of his compatriots. A testimonial from Niebuhr, and his
own force of intellect and character, secured him at once a very cordial
reception on this side of the Atlantic, and upon the recommendation of
the same distinguished patron a half-dozen leading periodicals in Germany
appointed him American correspondent. At the close of his first season
at the swimming school he turned with great energy to literary labors,
and soon made up his mind to edit an encyclopedia, modelled after the
seventh edition of the Brockhaus _Conversations-Lexicon_ and in part a
translation of that famous German work, but adapted to English readers
and supplied with numerous additional articles by distinguished American
contributors. The first volume of the new “Encyclopædia Americana”
appeared in 1829, and the thirteenth and last in 1833. It proved a
successful venture financially and brought him also the acquaintance of
prominent men in all parts of the country. In September of 1833 he moved
his family from Boston to Philadelphia, and by October 19 had finished
the draft of a constitution for Girard College. June 5, 1835, he was
unanimously elected Professor of History and Political Economy in South
Carolina College, at Columbia. May 18, 1857, he was elected Professor of
History and Political Science in Columbia College, New York City, but
later, in July of 1865, was transferred by the trustees to the chair
of Constitutional History and Public Law in the Law School. Here he
continued in active service until his sudden death, October 2, 1872.[208]
The outdoor gymnasia at Northampton, Cambridge, and Boston, although for
the historian they possess the greatest interest, were not the only ones
established during the period (1825-1830) under consideration. Each had
its imitators, and there were other attempts of a similar nature which
seem to have been more or less independent, or inspired by direct contact
with European models. The following information deserves a place as a
contribution to this study of beginnings, and it is offered in the hope
of arousing a curiosity which will result in additions to our present
knowledge of the subject.
No school of the period attracted more attention or enjoyed greater
prosperity than did the New York High School, a private institution
for boys, which the son of its founder[209] calls, at the time of
its organization, “the first and the only pay school in this country
established on the professed principle of cheap and efficient instruction
based on ... the adoption and employment of the monitorial system, by
which one teacher can communicate his knowledge to a large number of
pupils.” It was located in New York City, on Crosby Street, above Grand,
and opened March 1, 1825, with about 250 boys; but the numbers rapidly
increased to more than 600, and there were still about 400 at the time
of its discontinuance, near the close of 1831. The founder was John
Griscom (1774-1852), who during a year of foreign travel had examined
many famous European schools, and refers in the published account of
his observations[210] to the gymnastic exercises which he saw in Paris,
at the school of Amoros[211] (August 27, 1818), and in Switzerland
at the schools of Fellenberg, in Hofwyl (October 2 and 3, 1818), and
Pestalozzi, in Yverdon (October 8 and 9, 1818). In writing of the visit
to Amoros he remarks: “A systematic course of instruction, with proper
exercises, on the right use of their limbs, I have long thought would
be very advantageous to boys;” and his opening address at the New York
High School[212] contains the following: “I shall refrain from dwelling
longer on the literary pursuits of this seminary; but I cannot dismiss
my subject without adverting to one branch of instruction which it is
equally the wish, I believe, of the trustees and principals to establish
as a constituent part of our general plan, from a conviction of its
advantages to the bodily vigor and of course to the intellectual strength
and activity of our pupils. I allude to _gymnastics_.” The second annual
report of the Trustees[213] informs the public that “Gymnastic exercises
have been introduced, under the superintendence of an experienced and
careful teacher, and they have been attended with evident advantage to
the spirits and health of the pupils.”
Other schools which introduced gymnastic exercises, or planned to do so,
during the period under review, were the New Haven Gymnasium, conducted
by two sons of President Timothy Dwight of Yale; the Berkshire High
School, at Pittsfield, Mass.; the Mount Pleasant Classical Institution,
at Amherst, Mass.; the Livingston County High School, near Geneseo,
New York; the Buffalo High School; Gideon F. Thayer’s private school
for boys, in Harvard Place, Boston; the Noyes School, at Andover, New
Hampshire; Walnut Grove School, at Troy, New York; a High School in
Utica, New York; the Brookline (Mass.) Gymnasium; Mount Hope Literary and
Scientific Institution, near Baltimore, Maryland; and the Classical and
Scientific Seminary at Ballston, New York.[214]
After Harvard, Yale College seems to have been the first to introduce
gymnastics among its students. A letter received from the University
Library states “that the idea was taken from the gymnasium recently
established at Harvard; that Tutor William M. Holland was sent to
Cambridge in the summer of 1826 to procure the apparatus, and that he
superintended the exercises, which was begun with the opening of the
fall term of 1826.” At a meeting of the Corporation held September 12,
1826, it was “Voted that a sum not exceeding three hundred dollars, to
be expended under the direction of the faculty, be appropriated to the
clearing and preparation of grounds for a Gymnasium and to the erection
of apparatus for Gymnastic exercises, with a view to the promotion of the
health and improvement of the Students.”
A book entitled “Student Life at Amherst College,” compiled by George R.
Cutting and published at Amherst in 1871, contains the following account
of a similar movement at that institution: “In the summer of 1826 the
students of the college petitioned the Faculty for a holiday in which
to clear up the college grove. The petition was granted, and a second
day was given for further completion of the work. Thus logs, stumps, and
rubbish were removed, and the students had a fine grove at their command
for outdoor exercise. Several months afterward a Gymnastic Society was
formed, whose chief object was the erection and support of gymnastic
apparatus in this grove. The first president of the society was Joseph
Howard, M.D., of ’27. The Faculty concurred in the plans of the society,
and as a result of their efforts a variety of useful apparatus was placed
here, which was eminently serviceable to the students and contributed
not a little to their health and happiness. By the enthusiasm and public
spirit of the society a bathing house (10 × 12 feet) was also erected, in
the southwest corner of the grove. Here shower-baths were provided for
the members. This was afterwards burned down. In 1827-1828 the society
contemplated the erection of bowling alleys, but the Faculty would not
suffer the innovation.... Addresses were occasionally pronounced before
the society, in the chapel, upon ‘physical culture.’ The society did
not really cease to exist until 1859-1860, when the present (Barrett)
gymnasium was erected. Its apparatus, ever and anon increased and
repaired by the liberality of the students, was not removed from the
grove until after that time.” Dr. E. M. Hartwell, in his “Physical
Training in American Colleges and Universities” (Washington, 1886),
tells us that “One who entered Amherst as a student in 1829 describes a
gymnasium which consisted of ‘a few horses and parallel bars, with one or
two swings in the grove, but even these belonged to a society of students
who guarded their property with jealous care.’”
May 9, 1827, the Trustees of Williams College voted “That a sum not
exceeding one hundred dollars be appropriated to the procuring and
erection of apparatus necessary to the practice of the gymnastic
exercises, if the Faculty should think proper to introduce the same at
this College.” At a meeting of the Faculty held June 15 “The President
and Tutor (Mark) Hopkins,[215] a committee who had been appointed for
this purpose at a former meeting, reported a plan of a gymnasium, and
recommended a site for its location. The same committee were authorized
to prepare the ground according to the plan reported.” The Trustees,
again, on September 5, of the same year, voted “to appropriate a sum not
exceeding $50, in addition to the $100 granted at the last meeting, to
be expended on the Gymnasium.” The _Boston Medical Intelligencer_ for
September 25, 1827 (Vol. V, p. 311) contains this note: “A traveller
observes, ‘On a portion of the College grounds, in Williamstown, I
perceived one day a large number of students at work, headed by their
venerable President, and on examination found that they were preparing a
Gymnasium. Here is a fine spot for exercise, and we may hope that our
students will no longer, as in former years, leave college with emaciated
frames and pallid countenances, through want of proper exercise.’”
The following extracts are taken from a long letter[216] to the editor
of the _Boston Medical Intelligencer_ by a correspondent who signs
himself “G. F.” and writes under date of September, 1827. “Having lately
been in Providence, Rhode Island, I have had the best opportunity of
informing myself with respect to the success of the Gymnastic Exercises
in Brown University, and knowing the interest you take in this subject
I submit to your disposal some remarks on it. On the 11th of June
last, near the commencement of the present term, the exercises opened
under the most auspicious and flattering circumstances. Nearly all the
students, with the exception of the senior class, to the number of about
seventy, presented themselves on the exercise ground. The exercises
were countenanced, and consequently enlivened, by the presence of the
president, professors, and tutors of the university.... The officers,
as I stated, appeared with the students, and under the direction of the
teacher of gymnastics performed the exercises.... The students have taken
a great interest in the exercises throughout the term, though not so much
at the latter part of it as at first....” Late in July of 1827 Charles
Follen spent a day in Providence on his way to Newport, and refers to
the visit as follows in a letter to Beck: “I was for the most part with
Dr. Wayland,[217] and my ex-assistant Haskins, and held in the evening
a strict Gymnastic review. I spoke much with Dr. Wayland on education.
He stated many fine views and seemed to be respected and beloved by the
teachers. He exercises with all.” The University catalogue of 1827-1828
announces that “a very complete Gymnasium, with every variety of
apparatus for exercise, has lately been erected on the college grounds;”
and the Treasurer’s Reports contain these items:
1827—June 28, Cash paid for digging, etc., for gymnasium $ 26.06
July 27, Materials and labor for gymnasium 231.81
” 31, Lumber for gymnasium 24.14
Aug. 17, Dynamometer for gymnasium 27.00
” 27, Lumber, etc. 3.00
” 27, George F. Haskins, on account of services as
teacher in gymnasium 15.00
Sept. 4, George F. Haskins services in full 135.00
1828—Jan. 5, Spar for gymnasium 10.00
Feb. 4, Work on gymnasium 10.22
President Jasper Adams, D.D., of Charleston College, Charleston, S. C.,
is thus quoted in the _Quarterly Review and Journal of the American
Education Society_ for May, 1830 (Vol. II, p. 244): “A system of bodily
exercise was adopted three or four years ago, and suitable apparatus
was constructed; but it was not found useful, and the apparatus has been
destroyed.”
In speaking of Lieber’s year in England reference has already been
made (p. 240) to an American, John Neal,[218] who was at that time
residing in London. Neal had spent his early life in New England, in
1815 established himself in business in Baltimore, studied law in that
city and was admitted to the bar in 1819, and meanwhile, in order to
support himself, had been writing articles for the _Portico_ and had
followed these with a two-volume novel and a book of poems. A whole
series of novels was produced within the next few years, and some of
these were reprinted in London. Late in 1823 he left America to try his
fortune as a pioneer of American letters in the British metropolis, and
during his residence in London, from January of 1824 until April of
1827, became a frequent contributor to the most important magazines and
reviews, residing much of the time at the house of Jeremy Bentham, by
invitation of that distinguished jurist and philosopher. While still in
Baltimore he had been moved by signs of mental overwork to take lessons
in boxing, fencing, and riding; in London these were continued, and
when Carl Voelker[219] (German, _Karl Völker_), like Beck, Follen, and
Lieber, a German refugee, opened there his gymnasia patterned after the
Jahn _Turnplatz_ Neal became one of his most enthusiastic pupils and
supporters. Returning to America in the summer of 1827 he opened a law
office in Portland, Maine, where the remainder of his life was passed.
The following words from his autobiography (pp. 333-335) evidently refer
to the first year (1827-1828) of this residence:
“The late Governor Enoch Lincoln was my mother’s nextdoor neighbor.
Having understood that I was familiar with gymnastics, which he wanted
to have introduced here, he proposed a lecture. A lecture! I had never
been guilty of such a thing, in all my life; but as soon as my mind was
made up about staying here I determined to establish a gymnasium, take
charge of it myself, and refusing all compensation see what could be done
for the people in that way. Our first gathering was in the upper story
of the old town-hall, which I asked of the authorities; and succeeded in
obtaining for certain purposes, though vehemently opposed by such young
men as the late Colonel John D. Kinsman, then exceedingly popular with
the militia power.... From the old town-hall we went to Silver Street,
where we succeeded in obtaining a large hay magazine. There we set up
our ladders, and ropes, and masts, parallel bars, wooden horses, etc.,
with such success that before a month had gone over I had under my charge
at least fifteen or twenty full classes. Among these were many capital
gymnasts. After this, when the spring opened, we took the old fort on the
top of Munjoy Hill, and established another gymnasium there, with ditches
and leaping-poles; and then, having got into other and better business,
with my law and literature, and fencing and sparring classes, at my
office, I threw up these gymnasia; being, to say the truth, heartily sick
of them after I found how little the members were inclined to do for
themselves; not one of the whole being disposed to let me off, although
I had trained forty or fifty for class-leaders, and they understood that
I had my own living to get in other ways. Meanwhile I had established
a gymnasium at Brunswick,[220] which has continued to this day (he is
writing late in December, 1868), with two or three long interruptions,
and another at Saco; and all this without asking or receiving a
penny for my time and trouble; nay, more, at considerable expense to
myself....”[221]
Dr. John Collins Warren, who had helped to start the gymnasia at Harvard
University and in Boston, bore reluctant testimony to the brevity of
the period now under review in a lecture “On the Importance of Physical
Education,” delivered at Boston in August of 1830 before the convention
which organized the American Institute of Instruction. After urging
the importance of suitable bodily exercise, for young women as well as
young men, he adds: “The establishment of gymnasia through the country
promised at one time the opening of a new era in physical education.
The exercises were pursued with ardor, so long as their novelty lasted;
but owing to not understanding their importance, or some defect in the
institutions which adopted them, they have gradually been neglected and
forgotten, at least in our vicinity. The benefits which resulted from
these institutions, within my personal knowledge and experience, far
transcended the most sanguine expectations.” And he still believes that
“the diversions of the gymnasium should constitute a regular part of the
duties of all our colleges and seminaries of learning.”
BIBLIOGRAPHY.
In addition to the references given in the text and footnotes consult
Dr. E. M. Hartwell, Report of the Director of Physical Training,
December, 1891 (Boston, School Document No. 22—1891), pp. 12-23; and B.
A. Hinsdale, “Notes on the History of Foreign Influence upon Education
in the United States,” Chapter XIII in the Report of the Commissioner of
Education for the year 1897-1898 (Vol. I, pp. 591-629).
FOOTNOTES:
[189] See _Mind and Body_ for November, 1906 (=13=, 257).
[190] See _Mind and Body_ for May-July, 1906 (=13=, 65, 97, 129).
[191] See _Mind and Body_ for December, 1906 (=13=, 289).
[192] For the Giessen period consult:
Robert Wesselhöft, “Deutsche Jugend in weiland Burschenschaften und
Turngemeinden.” Magdeburg, W. Heinrichshofen, 1828.
Friedrich Münch, “Erinnerungen aus Deutschlands trübster Zeit.” St.
Louis, Conrad Witter, 1873.
Ferdinand Marx, “Die Giessener sogenannten _Schwarzen_ als Verbreiter
des Turnwesens,” in _Neue Jahrbücher der Turnkunst_ =27= (1881): 23-30,
66-73, and 106-113.
Moritz Zettler, in _Deutsche Turnzeitung_ 1882, pp. 9, 25, 45.
Karl Wassmannsdorff, in _Deutsche Turnzeitung_ 1882, pp. 269, 295, 319,
333, 345, and 355.
Kuno Francke, “Karl Follen and the German Liberal Movement,” in Papers of
the American Historical Association, =5=, parts 1-2 (January and April
1891).
Herman Haupt, “Karl Follen und die Giessener Schwarzen.” Giessen, Alfred
Töpelmann, 1907.
Herman Haupt, “Zur Geschichte des Giessener Ehrenspiegels.” Pp. 202-214
in “Quellen und Darstellungen zur Geschichte der Burschenschaft und der
deutschen Einheitsbewegung,” Band II, Heft 1-2. Heidelberg, Carl Winter’s
Universitätsbuchhandlung, 1911.
[193] For the Sand episode, and Follen’s relation to it, consult J.
Sauerbrey in _Neue Jahrbücher der Turnkunst_ =35= (1889): 98, 149, 196,
253, 301, 341, and 405; and Hermann and Münch in _Deutsche Turnzeitung_
1880, pp. 185 and 403.
[194] See “Life, Letters, and Journals of George Ticknor” (Boston, 1876),
Vol. =1=, p. 351.
[195] Same Account of the School for the Liberal Education of Boys,
established on Round Hill, Northampton, Massachusetts, by Joseph G.
Cogswell and George Bancroft. 19 pages.
[196] “Some Souvenirs of Round Hill School.” In _Old and New_ (Boston)
=6=, 27-41 (July, 1872).
[197] In his “Physical Training in American Colleges and Universities.”
Circulars of Information of the Bureau of Education, No. 5, 1885.
Washington, 1886. See page 22.
[198] A Treatise on Gymnasticks, taken chiefly from the German of F. L.
Jahn. Northampton, Mass., Simeon Butler, 1828.
[199] Pages 104 and 105 in “The Life of Charles Follen,” by (his wife)
E. L. Follen, Boston, Thomas H. Webb & Co., 1844. This “Life” also forms
Vol. I of “The Works of Charles Follen, with a Memoir of His Life.” In
five volumes, Boston, Hilliard, Gray & Co., 1842.
[200] Page 107 in her “Life of Charles Follen.”
[201] July 2. Quoted in part in the _Boston Medical Intelligencer_, =5=,
p. 133, (July 10, 1827).
[202] The Life of John Collins Warren, M.D. (Boston, Ticknor and Fields,
1860).
[203] A manuscript account of the latter trip, written by Lieber,
was found among Massmann’s papers, and published in the _Deutsche
Turnzeitung_ for 1895 (pp. 637-642 and 686-690), with introduction and
notes by Dr. Karl Wassmannsdorff.
[204] Lieber’s own ideas regarding the nature and means of physical
training are preserved for us in two articles contributed by him to the
_American Journal of Education_ of August, 1827 (=2=, pp. 487-491), and
the _American Quarterly Review_ of March, 1828 (=3=, pp. 126-150).
[205] The main facts regarding Beck’s life are given in “The Christian
Citizen. A Discourse Occasioned by the Death of Charles Beck.” Delivered
March 25, 1866, before the First Parish in Cambridge, by William Newell.
Cambridge, Sever and Francis, 1866. See also pp. 124-126 in Andrew P.
Peabody’s “Harvard Reminiscences” (Boston, Ticknor & Co., 1888).
[206] The first volume of his “History of the United States” was
published four years later.
[207] See also pp. 116-123 in Andrew P. Peabody’s “Harvard Reminiscences”
(Boston, Ticknor and Co., 1888).
[208] Sources: Thomas S. Perry, “The Life and Letters of Francis Lieber”
(Boston, James R. Osgood & Co., 1882); and Lewis R. Harley, “Francis
Lieber: His Life and Political Philosophy” (New York, The Columbia
University Press, 1899). See also Eduard Dürre’s “Erinnerungen” in
_Deutsche Turn-Zeitung_ 1872, pp. 286 and 293; and Karl Ulrich in
_Deutsche Turn-Zeitung_ 1874, pp. 227 and 228.
[209] “Memoir of John Griscom, LL.D.,” by his son, John H. Griscom, M.D.
(New York, Robert Carter & Bros., 1859). An article based on this volume
was published in Barnard’s _American Journal of Education_ for June, 1860
(=8=, pp. 325-347).
[210] “A Year in Europe, Comprising a Journal of Observations in England,
Scotland, Ireland, France, Switzerland, the North of Italy, and Holland,
in 1818 and 1819.” Two volumes. New York, Philadelphia, and Boston, 1823.
[211] The word is spelled _Amonton_ in Griscom’s book!
[212] See the _American Journal of Education_ for January, 1826 (=1=, pp.
50-52).
[213] See the _American Journal of Education_ for January, 1827 (=2=, pp.
58-60).
[214] See an article in _Mind and Body_ =12=, 313-319, based on an
examination of volumes =1-3= of the American _Journal of Education_
(1826-1828).
[215] Dr. Hartwell (Report to the Boston School Committee, December,
1891, page 20) says that Tutor Hopkins “had been sent on a mission to
Round Hill to investigate the construction and working of its gymnasium.”
[216] It was published in the _Intelligencer_ for September 18, 1827
(=5=, pp. 291-294).
[217] Francis Wayland, appointed President of Brown University in
February, 1827.
[218] Born in Portland, Maine, in 1793; died there in 1876. The chief
source of information concerning Neal is his “Wandering Recollections
of a Somewhat Busy Life. An Autobiography” (Boston, Roberts Brothers,
1869). His letters from England are quoted in the _American Journal of
Education_, =1= (1826), pp. 375 and 699-700; and =2= (1827), pp. 55 and
56. Consult also _The_ (New York) _Continental Monthly_ for September,
1862 (=2=, pp. 275-281), and _The New American Cyclopædia_, =12=, pp. 150
and 151 (New York, 1861).
[219] Voelker, born about 1796, was according to his own story a pupil of
Jahn’s and had served among the volunteers in the War of Liberation. As
a student at the University of Jena he assisted in organizing the first
_Burschenschaft_, became one of its directors, and exercised on the Jena
_Turnplatz_. In September of 1818 he went to Tübingen, at the request
of a delegation of students from its university, to help them start a
_Burschenschaft_ and open a _Turnplatz_ (see p. 98). In the course of the
investigation that followed the murder of Kotzebue by Sand the government
of Württemberg was asked to surrender Voelker for arrest as a suspected
accomplice. This was refused, but so much pressure was at length brought
to bear that in order to save the ministry further embarrassment he
crossed into Switzerland. Some years later he arrived in London, bearing
letters of recommendation to Jeremy Bentham and Henry Brougham (later
Lord Chancellor). Apparently in the spring or early summer of 1825,
after three months’ study of the English language, he opened with
Bentham’s help a garden _Turnplatz_ at No. 1 Union Place, New Road,
near Regent’s Park, at the same time receiving pupils in German. Later
in the same season he rented Mr. Fontaine’s riding-school on Worship
Street, Finsbury Square, using this also as a gymnasium. He afterwards
returned to Switzerland, and lived there until his death at Kappel, in
St. Gall, October 2, 1884. The fullest account of Voelker’s life is that
by Eduard Dürre (“Rückblicke und Träume eines alten Turners”) in the
_Deutsche Turn-Zeitung_ for 1872 (=17=, pp. 103-107, 127-129, 136 and
137). See also _Neue Jahrbücher für die Turnkunst_ for 1881, p. 72, and
1885, p. 43. On the London gymnasium consult the _American Journal of
Education_, =1= (1826), pp. 375, 430-432, 502-506, 625 and 626; and =2=
(1827), pp. 55 and 56. Volume =1= of “The Every-Day Book” by William Hone
(London, 1826) contains under date of September 25 (1825) some additional
particulars, and a drawing made for this article “by Mr. George
Cruikshank, after his personal observation of Mr. Voelker’s gymnasium in
the New-road.”
[220] In the pines back of the present site of Sargent Gymnasium. A
report of the Visiting Committee to the Board of Trustees and Overseers
of Bowdoin College, dated September 2, 1828, contains the following:
“The committee would introduce to the favorable notice of the Trustees
and Overseers the Gymnasium which has been recently established. We have
had some opportunity of witnessing its exercises and are convinced that
its effects are highly salutary.... These exercises are voluntary, few
however decline them. Those who have associated as Gymnics have presented
a request that a shed may be erected for their accommodation. But highly
as we approve of the association we think that this request cannot now be
acceded to. Other and more pressing wants of the college demand all its
funds.” This outdoor gymnasium was in existence until the early sixties,
when the college fitted up for similar uses a building formerly occupied
as a college common.
[221] For references to private gymnasia opened in New York and
Philadelphia at this period see _Mind and Body_, =12=, 350 and 351
(February, 1906).
CHAPTER XXII.
THE “NEW GYMNASTICS” OF DIO LEWIS.
In the third and fourth decades of the nineteenth century four different
systems of physical training had been brought forward for trial in the
United States—the drill and discipline of the military academy, the Jahn
gymnastics, manual labor on the farm or in the shop, and “calisthenics”
for girls and women. The claims of each were pressed by enthusiastic
advocates, and there was no lack of imitators of the educational
institutions in which each had first become incorporated; but for various
reasons not one of the four was generally adopted or won for itself more
than temporary foothold. From 1835 until 1860, though educators were
increasingly alive to the importance of physical training,[222] no one
appeared with anything that seemed more likely to meet the conditions
and needs of the time. Then came Dio Lewis, with his “new gymnastics
for men, women, and children,” something definite and practical. His
contagious enthusiasm created a wave of popular interest that spread
to all parts of the country, and the “Normal Institute of Physical
Education” which he opened in Boston in the summer of 1861 was the first
attempt in America to prepare teachers of a subject whose right to a
place in the school curriculum had long been conceded.
[Illustration: FIG. 70.—Dio Lewis (1823-1886).]
Dioclesian, or, as he called himself in after life, Dio Lewis, came of
vigorous Welsh stock and was born March 3, 1823, on a farm in Cayuga
County, New York, within a few miles of Auburn. Loran L. Lewis, born two
years later, who served two terms in the Senate of his native state,
and from 1882 until 1896 was Justice of the New York Supreme Court, has
written as follows regarding the early life of his elder brother:
“At the age of twelve Dio was as large and mature as ordinary boys of
fifteen. His mind was remarkably active; so were his movements. He could
do anything he desired to do with more rapidity than any person I ever
knew. When accustomed to committing to memory he could read a page in a
book once, close the book, and repeat it all. He had an investigating,
inquisitive mind. He liked miscellaneous reading, but did not relish
digging into study. He learned a great many facts, but did not read
many books thoroughly. He was enthusiastic in everything in which he
engaged. He developed as a child a talent for declaiming, even before
he could read much, and as a youth he engaged in debates and talked on
temperance.... He was cheerful and full of fun.... At the age of twelve
Dio left school and went into a cotton factory in Clarksville, near
Auburn, where he remained perhaps six months, working some sixteen hours
a day and receiving from $1.25 to $2.50 a week in orders on stores in
Auburn. After this he worked in Wadsworth’s hoe, axe, and scythe factory
for about two years, attending school at intervals....
“At about the age of fifteen he began teaching school in our district.
He surprised the patrons with novel ways of teaching and managing the
school. Heretofore the masters had moved around the room with ferule in
hand, always ready to deal a blow as occasion might offer. The young
teacher discarded the whip and went to singing, and for a change he would
march with the children into a piece of woods near the schoolhouse, and
sometimes, after the children got tired, he would allow them to play
hide-and-seek. Dio continued teaching near home for a year or two, and
when eighteen years of age he went to what was then Lower Sandusky, now
Fremont, Ohio, and organized a select school. Here he began the study of
Latin and Greek, and the classes which he soon formed in them, as well
as in algebra and geometry, kept him hard at work with his own studies
in order to keep well ahead of his pupils. The school was patronized by
most of the leading citizens, and gave so great satisfaction that in a
few months some of them volunteered to erect a handsome school building.
They obtained an act of incorporation, naming it, in compliment to Mr.
Lewis, ‘The Dioclesian Institute,’ and the new quarters were occupied
just before the close of the school year.”
A severe and prolonged attack of ague compelled the young teacher to give
up his work in Fremont at the end of a year, and he did not return to it.
Having made up his mind to study medicine, he now entered the office of
the physician at the Auburn State Prison, Dr. Lansing Briggs, with whom
he remained for three years, with the exception of one winter devoted to
teaching. In 1845 he went to Boston and spent some time in the Medical
Department of Harvard University, but seems to have been prevented from
completing the course by lack of means, and therefore came back to Port
Byron, not far from his home, to enter at once upon the practice of his
profession. By his partner, Dr. Lewis McCarthy, he was won over to the
new system of homeopathy, and a little later, after establishing himself
in Buffalo in 1848, began to edit a monthly publication called _The
Homœopathist_. The honorary degree of Doctor of Medicine was conferred
upon him in 1851 by the Homœopathic Hospital College of Cleveland, Ohio,
then only two years old.
A year after his removal to Buffalo Dr. Lewis married Miss Helen Cecelia
Clarke, daughter of a physician whose country residence was in the
neighborhood of Port Byron. Three of her sisters had died of consumption,
and in the fall of 1851 she herself began to exhibit unmistakable
symptoms of the same disease. Her husband, who was already urging in
his medical journal the importance of _preventive_ measures, at once
undertook the treatment of her case by hygienic means. These appeared to
be successful for a time; but in the fall of 1852 her cough reappeared,
and Dr. Lewis thereupon determined to give up his practice and go South
with her for the winter. Early in January they reached Fredericksburg,
Virginia. It was not in the man’s nature to remain idle, and he was soon
talking on health subjects to pupils in the schools. To identify himself
with a cause which had excited his interest ever since boyhood he now
joined “The Sons of Temperance,” but with a protest, his biographer[223]
tells us, “against the exclusion of women from membership. He urged
upon the leaders that in failing to enlist woman in the work they were
leaving out the element most essential and indispensable to success....
Meeting only indifference to his appeal for the admission of women to
the organized temperance work, he wrote a paper on ‘The Influence of
Christian Women in the Cause of Temperance,’ and read it in a hall in
the old town of Fredericksburg, Virginia, the same year (1853). This
was his first appearance on the public platform. Directly afterward he
gave lectures on this subject and on health topics in Fredericksburg,
Richmond, Petersburg, Norfolk, and Portsmouth, Virginia.” The two
succeeding winters were also spent with his wife in the South, where
among other places he lectured in Paris, Lexington, and Georgetown,
Kentucky. The same occupation was continued in New York State in the
intervening summers. At the end of this time, after renewed and more
careful attention to the matter of dress and exercise, Mrs. Lewis found
herself fully restored to health.
The next five years, until the summer of 1860, were devoted almost
entirely to platform work in “the Middle and Northern United States and
Canada.... It was his custom to speak on six evenings in the week on the
laws of health, laying special stress on his favorite axiom, adapted to
suit himself, ‘An ounce of prevention is worth a ton of cure.’ On Sunday
evenings he presented in the churches, or, by preference, in a large
hall, when such could be obtained, his favorite subject, ‘The Duty of
Christian Women in the Temperance Work.’” In 1856 he made a short visit
to Paris, chiefly to secure material suitable for demonstration in his
popular lectures on physiology, although he also improved the opportunity
to attend clinics at some of the city hospitals. Referring to this period
he speaks of himself as “burdened with what I felt to be my life-work,
that of urging upon the people their right to ‘a sound mind in a sound
body,’ and the introduction of a new system of physical training into
the schools of the country ...;” and how his thoughts were turned to
gymnastics is told in these words: “During the eight years of lecturing,
the spare hours were devoted to the invention of a new system of
gymnastics. The old, or German gymnastics, the one so common throughout
our country,[224] was obviously not adapted to the classes most needing
artificial training. Athletic young men, who alone succeeded in the feats
of that gymnasium, were already provided for. Boat clubs, ball clubs,
and other sports[225] furnished them in considerable part with the means
of muscular training. But old men, fat men, feeble men, young boys, and
females of all ages—the classes most needing physical training,—were not
drawn to the old-fashioned gymnasium. The few attempts that had been made
to introduce these classes to that institution had uniformly and signally
failed. The system itself was wrong.”
After experimenting for some years with the new exercises he had devised
Dr. Lewis determined to concentrate his efforts on the attempt to
introduce them to the public, and in June of 1860 established his home
in the vicinity of Boston for this purpose. “I thought,” he says, “that
Boston would prove more hospitable to an educational innovation than
any other city in the country;” and he was not disappointed. Evening
classes in gymnastics were soon organized in West Newton, Newtonville,
Newton, Newton Upper Falls, and Watertown. The English and classical
school of Mr. N. T. Allen, in West Newton, was the first to introduce
the new system, according to Dr. Lewis, and it was soon followed by the
Normal School at Framingham, and in Boston by the institutions of Mr.
Gannett in Pemberton Square and Madame de Maltchyce in Pinckney Street,
the Concord Hall school, and many others in and near the city. A public
gymnasium, also, for men, women, and children was opened at 20 Essex
Street, in Boston. Among others, a class of clergymen and their wives met
there regularly for an hour on Mondays—‘blue Monday’—to exercise with the
proprietor and, as one of them expressed it, to “inhale hygiene in his
presence, and in the atmosphere of his room.”
In August of 1860 the ‘new system’ was all at once brought to the notice
of leading educators gathered from the length and breadth of the United
States. Dr. Lewis himself related the circumstances to a Boston audience,
several years afterward,[226] as follows: “I may remark that the hour
of my coming was most fortunate for my cause. Just then the American
Institute of Instruction held its great Convention—the largest ever held
in this country—in this city. I was so fortunate as to be invited to
appear before that most august of all educational bodies, to explain and
illustrate the new system of gymnastics. They told me ‘You may have half
an hour on the second morning; we have the business so arranged that we
cannot give you more.’ But when the half-hour had expired they said, ‘Go
on;’ and I went on until two hours had passed, and then they voted that
the next morning they would meet at half past eight (having announced
important business for nine o’clock), to hear more about the new
gymnastics. The next morning was foggy and dark, but the hall (Tremont
Temple) was full, and they passed over their important business and gave
me nearly two hours more, and at noon another hour. With such an opening
as this, it is not remarkable that the interest spread over the entire
country.”[227]
One of Dr. Lewis’s objects in coming to Boston had been the establishment
of a training school for teachers of the “New System,” and in the spring
of 1861 the _Normal Institute for Physical Education_ was incorporated.
President Cornelius C. Felton, of Harvard College, readily consented to
serve as its president, and continued to take an active interest in the
enterprise until his death, a year later. Upon the list of twenty-eight
Directors appear the names of Governor John A. Andrew, Hon. George S.
Boutwell, Dr. H. I. Bowditch, Rev. James Freeman Clarke, Rev. E. E.
Hale, N. T. Allen, Prof. A. Crosby, and others of recognized standing.
The members of the first faculty were Thomas H. Hoskins, M.D., Professor
of Anatomy; Josiah Curtis, M.D., Professor of Physiology (the instruction
in this subject, as well as in anatomy, was later given by Dr. Hoskins);
Walter Channing, M.D., Professor of Hygiene; and Dio Lewis, M.D.,
Professor of Gymnastics. The next year a department of Elocution was
created, and Professor T. F. Leonard was called to the new chair. The
first course opened July 5, 1861, and continued ten weeks. Other similar
courses were to be given twice each year thereafter, beginning regularly
on the second of January and the fifth of July.
This Institute was not, as Dr. Lewis supposed, “the first ever
established to educate guides in Physical Culture,” since normal schools
of gymnastics had already been opened in Europe, _e.g._, at Stockholm
(1814), Dresden (1850), and Berlin (1851); but it was the first attempt
of the sort to be made in the United States, and as such merits more
than passing notice. A report of the first course and announcement of
the second, published in pamphlet form at Boston in 1861, yields the
following: “Readers of our educational journals are, to some extent,
familiar with Dr. Lewis’s system of Gymnastics, since in connection with
his appearance before the American Institute of Instruction last year
these journals, as also large numbers of the daily press, gave somewhat
full accounts of the principal features of that system.[228] It is a
novel system, novel alike in its philosophy and in its practical details.
Dispensing with the whole cumbrous apparatus of the ordinary gymnasium,
its implements are all light, easily managed, and designed less to impart
mere strength of muscle than to give flexibleness, agility, and grace
of movement. The exercises are accompanied by music, and all of them so
arranged that both sexes participate in each....
“The second course of the Institute will open on the second day of
January, 1862, and continue ten weeks. Many peculiar and marked
advantages will be enjoyed by the pupils of the winter term. D. B.
Hagar, Esq., Ex-President of the American Institute of Instruction,
Hon. Geo. Bradburn, Rev. Warren Burton, Rev. T. W. Higginson, and
several other well known gentlemen, will deliver lectures before the
class of the Institute....” In addition to the regular instruction in
anatomy, physiology, hygiene, and gymnastics, the class will be taught
“the principles of the ‘Swedish Movement-Cure,’[229] a department of
the institution devoted to the treatment of curvature of the spine,
paralysis, and other chronic maladies, affording rare opportunities to
study in detail the application of Ling’s methods in treating such forms
of chronic disease.... Each pupil, on being received into the Institute,
will be critically examined with reference to strength, form, and health;
and any deficiency thus disclosed will be at once placed under the most
thorough treatment.... Each will be drilled by Dr. Lewis in person, with
such care that he or she cannot fail to become a competent teacher of
gymnastics. And each will have two drills a day.... All will be made
familiar with at least two hundred different exercises ... and will be
allowed, every one in turn, to lead a small class....”
At this point a bit of contemporary testimony from a well-informed, but
more impartial, source may be introduced. During the years 1858-1862 Mr.
Thomas Wentworth Higginson contributed to the _Atlantic Monthly_ a series
of vigorous and stimulating articles, full of good sense and literary
charm, which were afterward collected and published in book form under
the title “Outdoor Papers” (Boston, 1863; New York, 1894). One of them,
on “Gymnastics,” which appeared in March of 1861, contains this reference
to the ‘New System:’ “It would be unpardonable, in this connection,
not to speak a good word for the favorite hobby of the day,—Dr. Lewis,
and his system of gymnastics, or, more properly, of calisthenics. Dr.
Winship[230] 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.”
In a volume published in 1868 Dr. Lewis says that more than two hundred
and fifty persons had taken the diploma of the Normal Institute in
the nine sessions which had been held. His biographer, on the other
hand, makes this statement: “During the next seven years (after its
establishment) four hundred and twenty-one ladies and gentlemen, in about
equal numbers, were graduated from it. These were able to answer the
demand for instructors in the ‘new gymnastics’ which soon came from the
schools and from private classes in the larger cities of New England, and
later from the remoter parts of the country, until at length the system
was taught in every State of the Union.”
Dio Lewis was a voluminous writer, but only two of his books require
particular mention here—“The New Gymnastics for Men, Women, and
Children,” first issued in 1862; and the tenth edition, practically a
new work although it bears the same title, which appeared in 1868. Both
were published in Boston, by Ticknor and Fields. The leading article,
“The New Gymnastics,” in the _Atlantic Monthly_ for August of 1862 (Vol.
X, pp. 129-148) is from his pen, and another of sixty-five pages was
published in two instalments in Barnard’s _American Journal of Education_
for June and December of the same year (Vol. XI, pp. 531-562; Vol. XII,
pp. 665-700). Of the 275 profusely illustrated pages in the book of 1862
only a little more than a third are filled with material of the author’s
own devising. Pp. 102-115 (“Free Gymnastics”) contain exercises selected
from Schreber’s “Aerztliche Zimmer-Gymnastik;”[231] on pp. 117-164
“The Dumb Bell Instructor for Parlor Gymnasts,” by Maurice Kloss,[232]
is given in condensed form and free translation; and pp. 165-255 are
occupied with a similar translation of Schreber’s “The Pangymnastikon;
or All Gymnastic Exercises brought within the Compass of a Single Piece
of Apparatus.”[233] The first portion of the book begins with ten pages
of introductory discussion relating to the need of special gymnastic
training for children, the inadequacy of military drills and other forms
of exercise commonly employed, the use of music with gymnastics, the
gymnasium, and the gymnastic dress. Then follow (pp. 18-101) Lewis’s own
exercises, grouped as follows: Bag exercises (30), exercises with rings
(54), exercises with wands (68), dumb-bell exercises (34), club exercises
(22), pin running (a game with clubs), games with birds’ nests (played
with bean-bags), the arm pull, the gymnastic crown, and the shoulder
pusher.
In the tenth edition of “The New Gymnastics” (1868) the translations
from German authors are omitted. In the words of the preface, “their
places have been supplied by original exercises, now for the first time
published. At the same time changes have been made in that portion of
the book which was devoted to an illustration of the author’s system of
Gymnastics. In the constant practice of the system for the past five
years, among thousands of pupils, a multitude of new exercises have been
added, and the entire method has been improved in many respects. This
edition is an attempt to reflect upon the pages of a book the changes
which have taken place in actual practice.” A few of the introductory
pages are worth quoting here, since they contain Dr. Lewis’s own
statement of the advantages of his system, his claims to originality, and
the order in which the exercises were developed.
“The advantages of the New System of physical culture are, in part the
following: (1) The varied movements of the New System give opportunity
for the full play of every muscle in the body, resulting in an all-sided
development. (2) The exercises are constantly changed from one set of
muscles to another, thus obviating weariness and undue disturbance of
the circulation. (3) The centrifugal impulse of the predominating series
secures a completeness and _grace_ attained by no other means, while
the centripetal character of the old or German method has long been the
opprobrium of physical culture, with the philosophical. (4) In the New
System the exercises are subordinated to personal or individual wants,
while in the old the person is entirely subordinated to the performance
of difficult feats. (5) The physiological purpose of all muscle training
is to perfect the intermarriage between nerve and muscle. The skill
exacted by the accurate lines, changing attitudes, and difficult
combinations of the new methods compels the most complete interaction
between soul and body. (6) The New School employs apparatus which cannot
strain and stiffen the muscles, not even in the extremely old and young
or feeble, while the old school sanctions weights which must produce the
slow, inelastic muscles of the cart-horse. (7) The New Gymnasium invites
to its free and social life persons of both sexes and all ages, while
every attempt that has been made to introduce the old, or the very young,
or women, to the Old Gymnasium has failed. (8) In the New Gymnasium
persons of both sexes unite in all the exercises with great social
enjoyment, thus adding indefinitely to the attractions of the place,
while the attractions of the Old Gymnasium are about equal to those of
a ballroom from which ladies are excluded. (9) In the New Gymnasium
everything is set to music. Marches, free movements, dumb-bells, wands,
rings, mutual-help exercises. No apathy can resist the delightful
stimulus. The one hundred persons on the floor join in the evolutions
inspired by one common impulse. Under the old system each individual
works by himself, deprived of the sympathy and energy evoked by music and
the associated movement.”
For three years, 1864-1867, Dr. Lewis conducted at Lexington,
Massachusetts, a school for girls, in which Theodore Dwight Weld, once
the confident advocate of manual labor as a system of exercise, was
a leading teacher, and Catharine Beecher was for a time one of the
lecturers.[234] In September of 1867 the school building was burned, and
although temporary quarters were at once secured in a summer hotel at Spy
Pond the project was abandoned at the close of another year. The number
of pupils rose to 140 in the third year, drawn from all over the country,
and nearly 300 were enrolled during the whole period. In the words of
Dr. Lewis, “The character of the announcement, with what the public knew
of my interest in physical education, drew together a company of bright
girls, with delicate constitutions, such girls as could not bear the
exclusively mental pressure of the ordinary school.... The girls went
to bed at half-past eight every evening. They rose early in the morning
and went out to walk, which walk was repeated during the day. They ate
only twice a day, and of very plain, nourishing food. They took off their
corsets. They exercised twice a day, half an hour, in gymnastics, and
danced an hour about three times a week. This was the general course,
and upon this regimen they rapidly improved. The gymnastic exercises
proved invaluable, but the nine hours in bed, I believe, played a still
more important part.” The Eastman biography states that “On entering the
school pupils were measured about the chest, under the arms, about the
waist, and around the arm and forearm. The average gain for eight months
was in chest measure, two and a half inches; waist measure, five inches;
size of arm, one and a half inches; of forearm, about one inch. The work
was so hard that with all this remarkable development the weight of the
pupils was often lessened.”
The closing of his school for girls, in 1868, may be said to mark the end
of Dio Lewis’s greatest activity in the interest of physical training.
He had never relinquished altogether the lecture field, and now found
more leisure for the work, speaking in Massachusetts and New Hampshire
on his favorite topics, physical education and temperance. The winter
of 1873-1874 was given up to an extensive course of lyceum lectures
in the West, under the auspices of a lecture bureau, and again, as in
the fifties, he devoted Sundays to the cause of Temperance, “always
keeping in mind what he had for twenty years desired to see inaugurated,
a practical movement on the part of women to close the saloons.” The
balance of the year 1874 was filled with temperance work exclusively, and
out of the “Women’s Crusades” which he inspired and helped to organize at
this time was developed the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, formed
at Cleveland in November. In 1875 he was obliged to heed the signs of
approaching physical collapse, and went to California for three years of
outdoor life.[235] The year 1884 saw him located on a farm at Smithtown,
Long Island, in search of rest and trying meanwhile to “concentrate his
attention on chickens,” but in July able to deliver a course of lectures
and teach gymnastics at the Martha’s Vineyard Summer Institute. His death
occurred at Yonkers, May 21, 1886.[236]
Mr. James C. Boykin pays the following just tribute to Dio Lewis: “It may
be true that ‘he was unconventional, sympathetic, plausible, oracular,
and self-sufficient,’ and ‘not a scientist in any proper sense,’ as one
writer has said.[237] But, notwithstanding all this, he rendered a real
service. Even if he had nothing in his favor but the undoubted fact that
he gave gymnastics in America a greater impulse than any man before him
had done, that would be sufficient to earn for him the gratitude of all
interested in physical training. But he did more. He first awakened
the American public to the appreciation of the fact that the mere
development of huge muscles is not the true idea of physical training.
His contribution to the list of exercises and to gymnastic material was
by no means insignificant, though, to be sure, his claims were out of
all proportion to their value; but, more than all else, he lifted the
gymnasium above the low plane it had occupied in the public mind as the
resort of prize-fighters and bullies, and carried gymnastics into the
schoolroom to an extent never before approached in this country, and into
the home to an extent that no one else had ever attempted.”[238] His
so-called ‘system’ was not of a sort to survive for many years the loss
of the founder’s energetic leadership, and yet he prepared the soil for
the broader and more substantial type of work of a later day.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.
This chapter was first published in the _American Physical Education
Review_ for June and September, 1906 (=11=, 83-95 and 187-198). It is
given here in condensed form, with a few footnotes added. The chief
sources of information have been already mentioned.
FOOTNOTES:
[222] Horace Mann (1796-1859), secretary of the Massachusetts Board of
Education 1837-1848, in the annual reports of the Board and in the ten
volumes of the _Common School Journal_ which he edited (1839-1848) had
much to say of school sanitation and the importance of instruction in
personal hygiene. In pp. 56-160 of the sixth report (1843) he attempted
to vindicate the title of a study of physiology and hygiene to “the
first rank in our schools, after the elementary branches.” Perusal of
successive reports of the annual meetings of the American Institute of
Instruction from the first (1830) to the thirtieth (1859), and of the
_Massachusetts Teacher_ from 1850 to 1860 (Vol. =3-12=) and Barnard’s
_American Journal of Education_ 1855-60 (Vol. =1-8=) reveals a cumulative
interest in the problem of physical education as the end of that period
approached. A. A. Livermore’s article in the _North American Review_ for
1855 (=81=:51-69), Dr. D. W. Cheever’s in the _Atlantic Monthly_ for 1859
(=3=, 529-543), and Thomas Wentworth Higginson’s series which began in
the latter magazine in March of 1858 (afterwards collected and published
under the title “Outdoor Papers”) point in the same direction, as do also
the twenty-first and twenty-second reports of the Massachusetts Board of
Education (1858 and 1859), that of the Boston School Committee for 1859
(pp. 52 ff.), and a report to the New York State Teachers’ Association
in the same year. “Tom Brown’s School Days,” first published in April
of 1857, presented an attractive picture of vigorous boy-life; and the
fourth chapter (Physical Education) of Herbert Spencer’s “Education” (New
York, 1860), which had already appeared in the _British Quarterly Review_
of April 1, 1859, was certain to attract attention. The following were
the recent manuals available:
Paul Preston’s Book of Gymnastics (Boston, Munroe & Francis, 1842). A new
edition, revised, was published in 1861 (New York, Charles S. Francis).
Walker’s Manly Exercises, revised by “Craven” (Philadelphia, John W.
Moore, 1856).
P. A. Fitzgerald, “The Exhibition Speaker” (New York: Sheldon, Lamport &
Blakeman, 1856). Pp. 223-268 are devoted to “Gymnastics and Calisthenics.”
N. W. Taylor Root’s “School Amusements” (New York, A. S. Barnes & Co.,
1857). Pp. 95-143 have to do with gymnastics.
R. T. Trall, “The Illustrated Family Gymnasium” (New York, Fowler &
Wells, 1857).
George Forrest (John George Wood!), “A Handbook of Gymnastics” (London
and New York, G. Routledge & Co., 1858).
Perhaps we should add that literary and pictorial curiosity, Henry de
Laspée’s “Calisthenics, or the Elements of Bodily Culture on Pestalozzian
Principles” (London, Darton & Co., 1856). A second edition was published
in 1865 (London, Charles Griffin & Co.).
[223] “The Biography of Dio Lewis,” prepared at the desire and with the
coöperation of Mrs. Lewis by Mary F. Eastman. New York, Fowler & Wells
Co., 1891.
[224] The oldest gymnastic society (_Turnverein_) of the German type in
the United States was the Cincinnati _Turngemeinde_, organized November
21, 1848. By October of 1853 there were at least seventy in existence,
and by September of 1856 ninety-six societies, with a membership of about
five thousand, had united into a national body and at least twenty more
were known to have been formed. At the outbreak of the Civil War there
were a total of one hundred and fifty-seven societies, in twenty-seven
states of the Union. See pp. 290 and 291.
[225] The beginning of rowing clubs in the United States goes back to
1833 and the few years following, and in the decade 1850-1860 interest in
the sport spread all over the country. Baseball, starting in the forties
and fifties, did not become a truly national pastime until the period
immediately succeeding the Civil War. The “Caledonian games” of Scotch
immigrants, forerunners of our track and field athletics, had been shown
in Boston in 1853 and Hoboken in 1857, but did not become widely popular
till the later sixties and seventies. Football existed only in its
primitive form.
[226] At the fourth commencement exercises of his Normal Institute for
Physical Education, March 18, 1863.
[227] See also the “Lectures Delivered before the American Institute of
Instruction, at Boston, Mass., August 21, 1860, including the Journal of
Proceedings, and a List of Officers” (published under the direction of
the Board of Censors. Boston, Ticknor & Fields, 1861). The references to
Dio Lewis occur on pp. 19-21, 23-25, 45 and 46, and 77 of the Journal
of Proceedings. Another report of these sessions is printed in the
_Massachusetts Teacher_, =13=, 378-393 (October, 1860).
[228] Lewis had himself published articles on “Physical Culture” in
the _Massachusetts Teacher_ for October and November of 1860 (=13=,
375-377 and 401-406), and in the latter month issued the first number
of a monthly periodical, _Lewis’ New Gymnastics for Ladies, Gentlemen
and Children, and Boston Journal of Physical Culture._ Vol. =2= (1862,
January-November, with one extra number) bore the title _Lewis’s
Gymnastic Monthly and Journal of Physical Culture_.
[229] It has already been noted (p. 157) that under Branting’s
directorship of the Central Institute in Stockholm (1839-1862) foreign
physicians began to be attracted by the new system of treatment, and
among them Mathias Roth of London. Roth afterwards published “The
Prevention and Cure of Many Chronic Diseases by Movements” (London,
1851), a translation of “The Gymnastic Free Exercises of P. H. Ling,
Arranged by H. Rothstein” (London, New York, and Boston, 1853), and
“Handbook of the Movement Cure” (London, 1856). The first American
physicians to write at length on the subject were the Taylor brothers of
New York, George H. Taylor “An Exposition of the Swedish Movement Cure”
(New York, Fowler & Wells) in 1860, and Charles F. Taylor his “Theory
and Practice of the Movement Cure” (Philadelphia, Lindsay & Blakiston)
a year later. Bayard Taylor spent the late winter and spring of 1857 in
Stockholm, visiting the Central Institute regularly as a “patient,” and
described his experiences in letters to the _New York Tribune_ and in his
volume “Northern Travel” (London and New York, 1857. Consult pp. 202-206).
[230] George Barker Winship, born at Roxbury, Mass., January 3, 1834,
and died at the same place (of heart disease) September 12, 1876. He was
educated at Harvard University (A.B. 1854, M.D. 1857), and in June of
1859 gave his first lecture on physical training, with an exhibition of
heavy lifting, in Music Hall, Boston, repeating these afterwards in many
places throughout the northern states and Canada. In the sixties and
early seventies he conducted a private gymnasium on Washington Street,
Boston, next door to the Boston Theater. See his “Autobiographical
Sketches of a Strength-Seeker,” in the _Atlantic Monthly_ for
January, 1862 (=9=, 102-115), an article on “Physical Culture” in the
_Massachusetts Teacher_ for April, 1860 (=13=, 126-132), and an item
in the latter magazine for April, 1861 (=14=, 159). Among the literary
announcements of Ticknor & Fields in the _Atlantic Monthly_ for August,
1862, a book on “Health and Strength” by Dr. Winship is mentioned as “in
press,” but it seems never to have been published.
[231] _Aerztliche Zimmer-Gymnastik_, oder Darstellung und Beschreibung
der unmittelbaren, keiner Geräthschaft und Unterstützung bedürfenden,
daher stets und überall ausführbaren heilgymnastischen Bewegungen
für jedes Alter und Geschlecht und für die verschiedenen speciellen
Gebrauchszwecke, entworfen von Dr. med. Daniel Gottlob Moritz Schreber,
pract. Arzte und Vorsteher der orthopädischen und heilgymnastischen
Anstalt zu Leipzig; 45 xylographische Abbildungen enthaltend, Leipzig,
Friedrich Fleischer, 1855. The third German edition of this work was
translated by Henry Skelton and published by Williams & Norgate, London
& Edinburgh, in 1856, with the title “Illustrated Medical Indoor
Gymnastics, or a system of medico-hygienic exercises requiring no
mechanical or other aid, and adapted to both sexes and all ages, and for
special cases.”
[232] _Das Hantel-Büchlein für Zimmerturner_, von Dr. Moritz Kloss,
mit 20 in den Text gedruckten Abbildungen. Leipzig, J. J. Weber, 1858.
Lewis’s translation is made from the second edition.
[233] _Das Pangymnastikon_, oder Das ganze Turnsystem an einem
einzigen Geräthe ohne Raumerforderniss als einfachstes Mittel zur
Entwickelung höchster und allseitiger Muskelkraft, Körperdurchbildung
und Lebenstüchtigkeit. Für Schulanstalten, Haus-Turner und Turnvereine,
von Dr. med. D. G. M. Schreber, Director der orthopäd und heilgymnast.
Anstalt zu Leipzig. Mit 108 Holzschnitten im Texte und 107 auf Tafeln.
II. Theil der “Aerztlichen Zimmer-Gymnastik.” Leipzig, Friedrich
Fleischer, 1862.
[234] See the “Catalogue and Circular of Dr. Dio Lewis’s Family School
for Young Ladies, Lexington, Mass., 1867” (Cambridge: Welch, Bigelow &
Co., 1867).
[235] Described in his “Gypsies” (Boston, Eastern Book Co., 1881).
[236] Lewis’s published works include, in addition to those already
mentioned, “Weak Lungs, and How to Make Them Strong” (1863), “Talks about
People’s Stomachs” (1870), “Our Girls” (1871), and “Five-Minute Chats
with Young Women” (1874), “Talks about Health” (1871), “Chastity” (1872),
and “In a Nutshell” (1883). In 1864 Amherst College conferred on him the
honorary degree of Master of Arts.
[237] Dr. E. M. Hartwell, in his first report as Director of Physical
Training in the Boston Schools (School Document No. 22, 1891), pp. 35 and
36.
[238] Report of the Commissioner of Education—1891-1892 (Washington,
1894), =1=, pp. 517 and 518.
CHAPTER XXIII.
PHYSICAL EDUCATION IN AMERICAN COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES.
Each of the four systems or sorts of physical training brought forward
for trial during the decade whose middle point was 1830 had been adopted
by one or more institutions of college rank. Under Follen’s guidance
Harvard students were introduced to the Jahn gymnastics in the spring of
1826 (pp. 235-237), and other outdoor gymnasia of the Hasenheide type
were prepared soon afterwards at Yale, Amherst, Williams, Brown (pp.
245-247), and Bowdoin (p. 249). In “A Memorial of the Class of 1827,
Dartmouth College,” written by Jonathan Fox Worcester (Second edition,
Hanover, N. H., 1867), there is also mention of “the interest awakened,
during the latter part of our career, in the subject of physical
education; the gymnastic apparatus set up behind the ‘College’ in 1826,
by the students themselves ...; the cricket clubs which covered the green
the next spring, adding this excellent game to our previous list of modes
of exercise....” Manual labor, combined with study, played a large part
in many sections of the country, and particularly in new colleges founded
while that movement was at its height. Norwich University made military
exercises and long marches on foot a regular part of the course, under
Captain Partridge, its first president (1835-1843); and Mount Holyoke
College, chartered as Mount Holyoke Female Seminary, opened in 1837 with
both domestic work and “calisthenics” included in its plan. The latter
was more properly dancing steps, accompanied by singing.[239]
In the fifties there were many signs of a reviving interest in gymnastics
as a means of exercise, culminating at the end of the decade in the
erection of brick or stone gymnasia at Harvard, Yale, and Amherst
colleges, at a cost of approximately $10,000 each. In the “Catalogue
of the University of Virginia—Session of 1851-1852” (Richmond, 1852),
following the list of “Faculty, Instructors and Officers” and the name of
the “University Hotelkeeper,” is the note: “Gymnastics are taught under
the authority of the Faculty, by Mr. J. E. D’Alfonce.”[240] The Board of
Visitors reported in 1852 that they “have read with pleasure that J. E.
D’Alfonce proposes to give instruction in that subject (gymnastics), and
hereby renew the permission formally given for a site on the University
grounds for a gymnasium, and are disposed to offer proper facilities....”
John S. Patton, in Chapter XXII of his “Jefferson, Cabell and the
University of Virginia” (New York and Washington, The Neale Publishing
Co., 1906), says that “the gymnasium authorized by the Visitors was
erected on the site of the present Academic Building, and on the banks
of the little stream nearby was built a house for Russian baths. Both
enterprises were directed by D’Alfonce, but fell into disuse during the
Civil War, when the buildings were destroyed. As a teacher the Frenchman
is said to have been unusually successful....”
The note regarding D’Alfonce appears again in the same place in the
catalogues issued by the University in 1853 and 1854, and in those from
1855 to 1860 inclusive his name is listed under “Faculty, Instructors
and Officers.” Professor William M. Thornton contributes the following
picture: “A pretty sight might have been seen from the foot of the Lawn.
As the visitor reached the apex of the triangle his eye would have rested
on a great, circular framed building in the midst of the field below.
Near it would have been seen a company of two or three hundred students,
all in an easy uniform of blue blouse and grey trousers, drawn up in
rank and file. At their head stood a lively Frenchman, an ex-soldier,
issuing the word of command. And under his orders this regiment of
college boys would go through a series of complex exercises, marching
and countermarching, ... all out in the open air.... Or, entering the
building at an earlier hour, he would have found these same boys turning
upon bars, swinging upon ropes, brandishing broadswords or foils,
dumb-bells and clubs. And then, as the sun descended and before the
great bell of the Rotunda rang out its evening summons, he would have
heard the Frenchman, in his splendid baritone, raise the chant of the
Marseillaise, or some other martial strain, and all the boys would join
in, and the great chorus of manly voices would rise ... upon the ... air.
The soldierly Frenchman was D’Alfonce....”[241]
Frederick Chase, writing on “the beginnings of athletics at
Dartmouth,”[242] says that “gymnastics were introduced in a small way
by the erection, in 1852, by the enthusiasts, in the ravine east of
the observatory, of a frame popularly called the gallows, by some the
‘Freshman’s Gallows....’ The apparatus consisted of nothing but two
suspended ropes with rings, and a horizontal bar (it is referred to
elsewhere as ‘two posts and a rude horizontal rail’).... It was a feature
of that spot until superseded by Mr. Bissell’s Gymnasium building, with
its wealth of apparatus, in 1867.”
Allan Marquand, in “The Princeton Book,”[243] recites that “in the
year 1856-1857 Robert Tarleton and Hugh L. Cole, of the class of 1859,
resolved that Princeton should have a gymnasium. When a sufficient sum
of money had been raised, a single-boarded structure was erected, and
painted with the inevitable _red_, that it might resist the storms of
heaven as its founders had resisted the objections of an unpropitious
Faculty. All winter long, in this stoveless shanty, with the winds
sweeping through from one end to the other, might have been seen a few
enthusiastic gymnasts, at work on parallel bars, springboard, trapeze,
and ladder, or swinging upon the rings and shaking the rafters in their
efforts to touch the beam.... In the year 1864 the building was sadly in
need of repair. Through an effort made by the class of 1866 sufficient
money was raised to supply it with a stove and a new set of apparatus.
Thus renovated, it answered the purpose of a gymnasium, until one night,
during the summer vacation of 1865, a report was circulated that a tramp
sick with the yellow fever was sleeping there. The next day the building
was reduced to ashes by the frightened people of the town.”
The Board of Trustees of Miami University, Oxford, Ohio, at a meeting
held July 2, 1857, adopted the following resolution, presented by William
M. Corry, one of their number: “Resolved, that the Committee on Finance
be instructed to report an appropriation of two hundred dollars for
the construction of a plain and substantial gymnastic apparatus for
the use of the students of the University.” J. C. Christin, M.D., a
Cincinnati German who was Professor of the German and French Languages
and Literatures at Miami University from 1856 to 1860, was made manager
of the project, and thus outlined its history in a report to the Board
of Trustees under date of July 4, 1859: “When in the fall of 1857 the
gymnastic apparatus purchased by your committee was offered to the use
of the students, a number of them organized themselves at once into
a society called the Miami Gymnastic Association, engaged Mr. F. H.
Roemler (a German) of Cincinnati as teacher at a salary of $40 a month,
and rented a building (a little west of the campus) for their gymnasium
at a cost of $60 a year.[244] During that entire first year the classes
practised regularly three times a week, and with what success you have
seen at our festival, where the young gymnasts of M. U. carried off the
first honors of the day over their competitors, delegates from several
of the old Turners’ societies. But to bring about this happy result we
were obliged to complete our gymnasium by purchasing about $300 worth
more of apparatus. This the Association did, encouraged as they were
by a generous donation of $150 from the citizens of Oxford and other
friends, and believing that they could pay their debt soon by the aid of
friends and the proceeds of some exhibitions. At the beginning of the
fall session of 1858 the society was reorganized, and Mr. Roemler again
engaged as teacher at a salary of $480; but as the number of members
during these two sessions was on an average only about 75 (out of 220
students) they were, for want of funds, obliged to rescind the contract
with their teacher at the end of March last, whereupon Mr. Roemler went
to Dayton.... After his departure the number of students at the exercises
of the gymnasium, which under their faithful teacher’s direction had
always been from 60 to 80, dwindled down in a few weeks to about a dozen,
and today the gymnasium is closed altogether, for want of interest in the
students and citizens to continue their exercises without a teacher.”
The annual catalogue of Miami University issued in May of 1859,
apparently oblivious of the sudden collapse of the plan, announces
that “An extensive Gymnastic Apparatus has been erected in the College
Campus, and an expert Teacher instructs the students in all the
branches of Gymnastics under the direction of Professor Christin,
M.D.” The “festival” to which the latter refers took place June 29,
1858,[245] on the day before Commencement. Apparatus had been set up
on the campus between the Main Building and the South Dormitory, and
“thousands of spectators of both sexes came.” A report published in the
_Cincinnati Daily Gazette_ of July 2, 1858, states that about twenty-five
representatives of the Hamilton _Turnverein_ and other delegates from
the Cincinnati _Turngemeinde_ and Young Men’s Gymnastic Association
were present. The program opened at 2 P.M. with a song by the Hamilton
Turners. William M. Corry then addressed the audience on the subject of
physical education, and the gymnastic exercises followed, continuing
until late in the afternoon. The eight young men to whom the judges
awarded prizes, four of them members of the Miami Gymnastic Association,
“were each crowned with a wreath of evergreen in the presence of the
multitude.”[246]
In the Williams College catalogue for 1851-1852, published in the former
year, it is stated that “A well furnished Gymnasium, with which are
connected facilities for bathing, is now provided.” The same sentence is
repeated in catalogues for 1852-1853 and 1853-1854, but modified in those
for 1854-1855 and the three years following to read: “For their physical
training a well furnished Gymnasium, with which are connected facilities
for bathing, is owned and controlled by the students.” The catalogue for
1858-1859, issued in 1858, announces that “a new stone Gymnasium, to be
owned and controlled by the students, is about to be erected, with which
will be connected facilities for bathing;” and in the next year we are
told that “a convenient Gymnasium, owned and controlled by the students,
has just been erected.”
President James Walker of Harvard University, in his annual report dated
December 31, 1858, after remarking that “the need of greater facilities
for exercise suited to our climate, and for the physical education of
students, has long been felt, and is felt more and more,” announced that
“a friend of the College, whose name is not divulged, has given $8000 to
be expended in the erection and equipment of a Gymnasium, for the use of
‘all undergraduates and officers of the College, and such other persons
as the College Faculty may permit’....” The next December he reported
that “a suitable building has been erected during the past year, with all
the necessary apparatus, accommodations, and means of instruction. Almost
all the students, both undergraduates and members of the professional
schools (there were then 431 undergraduates, and the total enrollment was
839), have begun to avail themselves of the advantages thus supplied,
each one paying a small fee (two dollars a term) in order to defray the
current expenses of the establishment.” The Treasurer’s Statement dated
December 1, 1859, noted that “the want of a Gymnasium has been supplied
by the presentation of $8000, through Rev. Dr. Huntington, by a gentleman
who declines to be known except as a ‘Graduate’ of the College.[247] The
building has been erected and furnished, at a cost of $9488.05.” Further
details are supplied by _The Harvard Magazine_ for October, 1859 (VI:
38): “The spot selected for the building was the little Delta at the
junction of Cambridge Street and Broadway. The ground was broken March
23, 1859. The building is in the Italian style, and was erected under the
direction of Mr. E. C. Cabot, architect, Boston.... The Gymnasium was
opened for use on Wednesday, September 14. Meanwhile, most fortunately,
the services of Professor (!) A. Molineaux Hewlett had been secured. He
came with an experience in gymnastic training of fourteen years, the
last five of which had been devoted most acceptably to the citizens of
Worcester....”
[Illustration: FIG. 71.—The Harvard Gymnasium of 1859.]
In “The Harvard Book” (Cambridge, 1875) Thomas Wentworth Higginson
describes the gymnasium as “of brick, octagonal in form, 74 feet in
diameter and 40 feet high. It includes as great a variety of apparatus as
is compatible with the size of the building; there are also two bowling
alleys, and there are dressing-rooms, but no bath-rooms.... The first
teacher of gymnastics in Harvard College was Abram Molineaux Hewlett. He
was a professional teacher of boxing, and had established a gymnasium
of his own in Worcester, Mass., where he was highly esteemed. He was a
mulatto, of very fine physique, and of reputable and estimable character.
He was, moreover, a fair gymnast and a remarkably good teacher of boxing.
In the first years of his term of service there was a good deal of
activity in the Gymnasium, and regular class-exercises went on. After a
few years the interest fell off in some degree, or concentrated itself
chiefly on the rowing-weights. Mr. Hewlett died December 6, 1871, and ...
Mr. Frederic William Lister was appointed in 1872.” Hewlett’s name does
not appear in the list of “Officers of Instruction and Government” in the
Harvard catalogues, but from 1867 to 1871 he is mentioned with the title
“Instructor and Curator” in a brief statement regarding the “College
Gymnasium.”
[Illustration: FIG. 72.—The Yale Gymnasium of 1860.]
[Illustration: FIG. 73.—The Yale Gymnasium of 1860.]
At Yale College a gymnasium was erected in 1859, on Library Street near
the corner of High, behind the college grounds proper, and “dedicated on
Monday evening, January 30th” of the following year.[248] It was a plain
brick structure 100 by 50 feet, with a main hall 25 feet high to the
crossbeams, and large gable windows. Across the front (south) end of the
hall stretched a gallery 25 feet deep, in which were dressing closets and
a room or rooms for an instructor or janitor. A basement story, about
10 feet high, contained bath-rooms and bowling alleys. The total cost
was something over $11,000, of which $10,000 was appropriated by the
Corporation and George Merriam of Springfield, Mass., contributed $500 of
the balance. Yale catalogues from 1860 on through the decade state that
for the privileges of the gymnasium, “including instruction, the sum of
$4 a year will be charged to each academical student.” Catalogues of 1867
and later years add that “those who use the bathing-rooms connected with
the Gymnasium pay a small fee for tickets.” Lyman B. Bunnell, B.A., is
listed as Instructor in Gymnastics in 1860 and 1861, and Follansbee G.
Welch[249] during the years 1867-72.[250]
[Illustration: FIG. 74.—The Amherst (Barrett) Gymnasium of 1860.]
The fourth president of Amherst College, Rev. William Augustus
Stearns,[251] in his inaugural address (November 22, 1854) and his
annual reports to the trustees urged impressively, again and again,
the adoption of measures designed to protect the health of students.
“Physical education is not the leading business of college life,” he
said in 1854, “though were I able ... to plan an educational system
anew, I would seriously consider the expediency of introducing regular
drills in gymnastic and calisthenic exercises.” And in 1859 he states
his belief that “if a moderate amount of physical exercise could be
secured to every student daily, I have a deep conviction ... that not
only would lives and health be preserved, but animation and cheerfulness,
and a higher order of efficient study and intellectual life would be
secured.” At their meeting in August of 1859 the trustees took steps to
carry out at once the president’s wishes. Work on the new building was
begun in the fall of that year, and the next summer “Barrett Gymnasium”
was completed.[252] The name commemorates a liberal donor, Dr. Benjamin
Barrett, of Northampton, who had been a near neighbor of the Round Hill
School throughout its entire life history. August 6, 1860, following
still the lead of the president, the trustees voted to establish a
department of hygiene and physical education, the head of which should
be a thoroughly educated physician, and the equal of any other member of
the college faculty. “It is distinctly understood that _the health of the
students_ shall at all times be an object of his special watch, care, and
counsel.” John Worthington Hooker (1833-1863), a graduate of Yale College
and Medical School (1854 and 1857), was appointed to the position at
once; but failing health led to his resignation within a year, and by the
action of the trustees on August 8, 1861, Dr. Edward Hitchcock[253] was
called from Williston Seminary to take the place thus left vacant. His
connection with the department continued without interruption for only a
few months less than fifty years, until his death on February 16, 1911.
[Illustration: FIG. 75.—Edward Hitchcock (1828-1911). (From a photograph
taken in 1867.)]
His own attitude toward physical training, and a foreshadowing of what
he was soon to undertake, will be found in the course of nine pages
of “Remarks upon Muscular Development” in an “Elementary Anatomy and
Physiology, for Colleges, Academies, and other Schools,” which Dr.
Hitchcock had just published (New York, 1860) in conjunction with his
father. An article which he prepared in 1878 for the Tenth Annual Report
of the Massachusetts Board of Health sums up as follows the essential
features of the “Amherst plan” as it had been worked out under his
direction: “This department was not created, nor has it been developed,
for the purpose of extraordinary attention to the muscular system.
Its sole object has been to keep the bodily health up to the normal
standard, so that the mind may accomplish the most work, and to preserve
the bodily powers in full activity for both the daily duties of college
and the promised labor of a long life.... At the same time, it has been
equally desired, that the so-called exercises of this department should
be mentally as well as physically enjoyed by the students, and not be
made a tedious, mechanical, or heavy drill.... An essential feature of
it is, that each student with his class by itself, at a stated hour on
four days of the week, appears at the gymnasium, and performs his part
in systematic and methodical exercises timed to music. Each class has
its own organization of officers and men.... The exercises are commonly
known as those of light gymnastics, which consist of various bodily
movements accompanied and guided by music; the larger part of them with
a wooden dumb-bell in each hand....[254] Especially during the colder
season of the year, running is practised by the class on the floor
of the gymnasium. A few marching movements are also undertaken by the
classes. This amount of exercise is required of every student who is
sound of limb.” In the fall of 1861 Dr. Hitchcock began to note in the
case of each freshman the age, weight, height, girths of chest, arm, and
forearm, and strength of upper arms (pull-up), repeating the examination
afterwards at the end of each year of the course. Other measurements
were added from time to time, and about twenty years later the list was
considerably extended. The tabulated results appear in the Anthropometric
Manual published in 1887, and in the revised editions of 1889, 1893, and
1900.[255]
[Illustration: FIG. 76.—Vassar College: “The Calisthenic Hall” of 1866.]
As a matter of record the following data regarding other college gymnasia
erected or equipped during the sixties and seventies deserve a place
here. At _Bowdoin College_ in 1860 or soon afterwards a gymnasium was
fitted up in what had been a dining hall. Before the middle of the next
decade it was removed to unfinished Memorial Hall, and in 1882 to the
lower floor of Winthrop Hall. William Colyer Dole was “Director of the
Gymnasium” 1863-1869, and Dudley Allen Sargent 1869-1875. Men students
in _Oberlin College_ organized a Gymnasium Association in 1860 and
erected a one-story wooden structure about 75 by 25 feet, opened March
30, 1861. Samuel Putnam, member of the Worcester, Mass., Gymnastic Club
and highly recommended by Rev. Thomas Wentworth Higginson, was secured as
instructor of the classes which were at once organized, but left within
a month to join the Massachusetts troops at Washington. Another wooden
building of similar size, and again the result of student effort, was
opened in October of 1873, the earlier one having been removed in 1867.
At _Wesleyan University_ a one-story wooden structure with one room 70
by 40 feet was built and equipped in 1863-1864 at a cost of $5000. A
large room in Goodrich Hall, erected at _Williams College_ in 1864, was
fitted up with gymnastic apparatus, and there was a bowling-alley on
the lowest floor. A wooden gymnasium built in 1881 was blown down in
1883. Charles Russell Treat served as Professor of Physiology, Vocal and
Physical Culture 1866-1869, Henry Wilson Smith (A.B., ’69) as Instructor
in Physical Training 1870-1874, and Luther Dana Woodbridge (A.B., ’72)
in the same position 1874-1876. A gymnasium hall 80 by 30 feet and 19
feet high was ready for use at _Mt. Holyoke Seminary_ in the summer
of 1865. After 1862 the Dio Lewis gymnastics had replaced the earlier
“calisthenics” there. _Vassar’s_ gymnasium (80 by 30 feet) and riding
school was occupied at the opening of the second college year, in the
fall of 1866. Here, too, the Dio Lewis exercises were employed. In March
of 1867 a two-story gymnasium of brick with stone trimmings was opened at
_Dartmouth College_, to which George H. Bissell gave nearly $24,000 for
the purpose. The architect was Joseph R. Richards of Boston. F. G. Welch
was Instructor in Gymnastics 1867-1868, Charles Franklin Emerson (A.B.,
’68) 1868-1871, Devinel French Thompson (B.S., ’69) 1871-1872, Solon
Rodney Towne (A.B., ’72) 1872-1875, and Thomas Wilson Dorr Worthen (A.B.,
’72) 1875-1893. “In the spring of 1869 and during the greater part of
the year 1869-1870 the students (of _Brown University_) had the use of a
private gymnasium on Canal Street, the college bearing half the expense”
(Bronson 1914, p. 377). _Princeton’s_ gymnasium, the gift of Robert
Bonner and Henry G. Marquand, was a two-story structure of gray stone,
planned by George B. Post of New York, and with the ground on which it
stood cost $38,000. The main hall was 80 by 50 feet. George Goldie[256]
was Superintendent of the Gymnasium 1869 (it was opened January 13,
1870)-1885. The annual report of the Board of Regents for the year ending
September 30, 1870, records that at the _University of Wisconsin_ “a
building for drill and gymnastic exercises has just been completed at a
cost of about $4000.... The main building is 100 by 30 feet,” with a wing
containing an armory. Before 1870 _Washington University_ (St. Louis)
had provided for its students a one-story gymnasium with a main hall 70
by 50 feet, at a cost of $7000. Other institutions known to have made
similar provision were Pennsylvania College, at Gettysburg (1870, wood,
$3000), Beloit (1874, wood, $5000), University of California (1878, wood,
$12,000), and Vanderbilt University (1879, brick, $22,000).[257]
The three decades which witnessed the gradual revival of interest in
gymnastics in the colleges were not without other signs of a growing
desire for some sort of physical activity suited to the conditions and
needs of the undergraduate world. The Civil War brought inevitably to the
front the idea of a trained citizen soldiery which had animated Captain
Partridge’s endeavors forty years before, and the beginnings of athletic
sports in the colleges go back to the period immediately preceding and
following the death-grapple between North and South.
The momentous Land-Grant Act of 1862, introduced by Justin S. Morrill
of Vermont, passed by both houses of Congress in June and signed by
President Lincoln July 2, allotted to each state a quantity of public
land equal to 30,000 acres for each senator or representative in
Congress, the proceeds from the sale of these lands to be used for “the
endowment, support, and maintenance of at least one college, where the
leading object shall be, without excluding other scientific and classical
studies and _including military tactics_, to teach such branches of
learning as are related to agriculture and the mechanic arts in such
manner as the legislatures of the states may respectively prescribe in
order to promote the liberal and practical education of the industrial
classes in the several pursuits and professions in life.” The clause
relating to military instruction “was not in the original bill, but
was introduced ... because the advantage of the South over the North
at the beginning of the war was attributed to the numerous military
schools there, and it was thought that at least one college in each
state should teach military subjects.”[258] In accordance with this Act
nineteen states, among them Connecticut, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, and New
Hampshire, have organized independent colleges of agriculture and the
mechanic arts; in twenty-one others the college of agriculture is a part
of the state university, as in California, Illinois, Maine, Minnesota,
Missouri, Nebraska, Ohio, and Wisconsin; and in a few cases all or a
part of the income goes to a privately endowed institution, like Cornell
University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Purdue University, and
Rutgers College. Army officers are detailed to serve as instructors in
military science and tactics, and in 1915-1916 the number of young men
who received such instruction under the Act of 1862 was 33,445.[259]
Rowing was the first sport to gain a foothold in American colleges.
The earliest organizations were the boat clubs formed at Yale in 1843
and at Harvard in 1844. Crews from the two colleges met for a race on
Lake Winnipiseogee, August 3, 1852. The next year the Yale Navy was
organized, University of Pennsylvania students formed a university barge
club in 1854, 1856 marks the beginnings of rowing at Dartmouth, Brown’s
first crew was the one of 1857, and on May 26, 1858, Harvard, Yale,
Brown, and Trinity organized the College Union Regatta, the first races
occurring July 26, 1859, and the second July 24, 1860, both at Worcester,
Massachusetts. The outbreak of the Civil War interrupted the series of
regattas, and after its close the crews of Harvard and Yale were the
only ones to renew the annual contests. But the Harvard-Oxford race over
the Putney-Mortlake course August 27, 1869, attracted the attention of
other colleges to the sport, and interest in rowing culminated in the
years 1870-1876. Amherst, Princeton, Cornell, and the Massachusetts
Agricultural College formed boat clubs in 1870, and Trinity became active
again. In the spring of 1871 representatives of Amherst, Bowdoin, Brown,
and Harvard organized the Rowing Association of American Colleges, and in
July of this and the five succeeding years this body held regattas, on
the Connecticut River at Springfield for three years, and afterwards at
Saratoga Lake. Thirteen colleges sent crews to the great regatta of 1875.
The list of those who competed at one or more of the races during this
period includes Amherst, Bowdoin, Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth,
Hamilton, Harvard, Massachusetts Agricultural College, Princeton,
Trinity, Union, Wesleyan, Williams, and Yale. Rutgers and the College of
the City of New York had also sought admission to the Association, and at
the University of Pennsylvania a boat club was organized in 1872.
College baseball had its beginning in the years 1858-1860, with the
appearance of teams at Amherst, Princeton, Williams, and Yale. The first
intercollegiate game seems to have been that between Amherst and Williams
representatives at Pittsfield, Massachusetts, July 1, 1859. During the
course of the Civil War the game was introduced at Harvard and Brown, and
Bowdoin had a nine as early as 1864. In the years immediately following
the war interest in the game became general and intense over the entire
United States, and clubs were formed everywhere, in the colleges and
outside of them.
Intramural football, in a primitive form, was all that existed
in American colleges up to 1869. Traces of it are found at Yale,
Princeton, Harvard, Dartmouth, Rutgers, Brown, and Amherst. The first
intercollegiate football game in this country was played by Princeton and
Rutgers teams at New Brunswick, New Jersey, November 6, 1869, and by 1876
the present form of game was definitely established.
The general practice of track and field athletics can be traced back
to three influences—the example of students at Oxford and Cambridge
Universities, the “Caledonian Games” of Scotch immigrants organized into
clubs for the purpose of keeping up interest in their native language
and customs, and the contests arranged as appendages of the rowing
events at Saratoga in 1874, 1875, and 1876. A letter from George Rives,
a graduate of Columbia University who was present at the annual meets of
the two English universities in 1868, led to the formation of an athletic
association at Columbia, and to its first meet, in June of 1869. The
first of the Caledonian Clubs was organized in Boston March 19, 1853,
and its earliest games were held later in the same year. The New York
Caledonian Club dates from 1856, and its first meet was on St. George’s
Cricket Grounds, Hoboken, in October of 1857. Similar clubs were formed
in Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, Montreal, and other cities. The
annual games of these organizations were especially popular in the ten
or fifteen years following the Civil War, and they may be considered
the precursors of our modern amateur athletic clubs. George Goldie,
long a member of the New York Caledonian Club, at one time director of
its gymnasium, and twice a winner of the championship medal at national
Caledonian meets, was director of the Princeton gymnasium from 1869 to
1885, and under the inspiration of his presence the Princeton Athletic
Club was organized in the spring of 1873. The club had its first field
day on June 21 of that year. Yale students held a field meet May 4, 1872.
In the fall of 1873 the University of Pennsylvania Athletic Association
was formed, and the Harvard Athletic Association a year later. Among the
colleges which competed in five events at Saratoga in 1874 were Columbia,
Cornell, Harvard, Princeton, Wesleyan, Williams, and Yale. Amherst,
University of Pennsylvania, and Union were added in 1875, and Dartmouth
in 1876. Although an intercollegiate athletic association was organized
in this last year (1876), the present widespread interest in track and
field athletics was not reached until the following decade. Nineteen
colleges were represented at the Mott Haven (New York) games in 1886. The
New York State Intercollegiate Athletic Association, made up of seven
colleges, was already in existence (1885), and delegates from seven other
colleges formed the New England Intercollegiate Athletic Association on
November 23, 1886.[260]
[Illustration: FIG. 77.—Dudley Allen Sargent (1849-).]
Twenty years after the octagonal gymnasium on Cambridge Street and
Broadway was opened to students in Harvard University a structure ten
times as costly, the gift of Augustus Hemenway, Harvard 1875, to his
_alma mater_, was nearing completion at the corner of Cambridge Street
and Holmes Place, facing the College Yard. The selection and arrangement
of apparatus and the details of system and method were left to the newly
appointed director, Dr. Dudley Allen Sargent, a man whose stimulating and
molding influence upon physical training in American colleges in the next
few decades was to be more potent and more widely felt than any other
that can be named. His interest in gymnastics reached back to boyhood
days, and during ten years of experience as a teacher in that field he
had evolved certain unique plans of equipment and administration which
were now to be carried out under most favorable conditions.
He was descended from New England ancestry, the son of a ship carpenter
and sparmaker in Belfast, Maine, on the west side of Penobscot Bay, and
was born there on September 28, 1849. The harbor and the bay furnished
abundant opportunity for youthful activity and enterprise, and the early
death of his father made it necessary to give much of the time outside of
school hours and in the long vacations to varied forms of manual labor on
land and sea, under the direction of an uncle. Meanwhile he had joined
with other high school boys in putting up a horizontal bar and some other
apparatus on the school grounds and starting a gymnastic club. Reports of
exhibitions given at Bowdoin College, in Brunswick, sixty miles away to
the southwest, added to their zeal, and constant practice brought such
a degree of skill that they ventured to give similar public exhibitions
of their own, first in the town-hall at home, and later in some of the
neighboring towns.
An invitation to become director of the gymnasium at Bowdoin College, in
the fall of 1869, opened the way to further study for the young expert
and started him on a career which was followed thenceforth without
interruption. Two years later he was ready to enter the college as a
freshman, retaining still the position to which he had been originally
appointed, and now the authorities required all students to attend
regular class exercises in the gymnasium for a half-hour daily during
most of the fall and winter terms, _i.e._, when they were not occupied
with military drill. During his sophomore year Sargent spent three
months at Yale College, introducing there the same plan of work, and
he continued to divide his time between the two institutions until his
graduation from Bowdoin (A.B.) in 1875. The fall of that year found
him instructor in gymnastics in Yale College and a student in the Yale
Medical School, and from the latter he obtained the degree of M.D. in
January of 1878.