How to Get Strong and How to Stay So quotes

some overstep; others cant to one side; this one has one shoulder higher than the other, and that one both too high; some have heavy bodies and light legs, others the reverse; and so on, each with his own peculiarities.

A thoroughly erect, well-proportioned man, easy and graceful in his movements, is far from a frequent sight.

Any one accustomed to athletic work, and knowing what it can do for the body, must at times have wondered why most men allowed themselves to go along for years, perhaps through life, so carrying themselves as not only to lack the outward grace and …

Broad as is the variety of the farmer's work, far the greater, and certainly the heavier, part of it tends to make him stoop forward and become inerect.

No man stands up straight and mows.

When he shovels, he bends more yet; and every ounce of spade or load pulls him over, till, after much of this sort of work, it requires an effort to stand upright. Ploughing is better for the upper body, but it does not last long.

Another and natural consequence many parents must have noticed. Often, in a city neighborhood, there is not one strong, efficient boy to lead on the rest, and show them the development which they might have and should have.

Boys, like men, are fond of doing whatever they can do well, and of letting others see them do it, and, like their elders, they gladly follow a capable and self-reliant leader.

But if no one of their number is equal to tasks which call for first-class strength and staying powers, when no one will lead the rest up to a higher physical plane, they never will get there.

Even though physically improved by it, it is not certain that this marked development will carry them onward through life to a ripe old age. But, with others indifferently developed, there will be many more positively weak. Such men may have bright, uncommon heads.

Yes; but a bright and uncommon head on a broken down, or nearly broken down, body is not going to make half as effective a man in the life-race as a little duller head and a good deal better body.

But have these graduates had a competent instructor at college to look after them in this respect? Will some one name a college where they have such an instructor?

A man of trained mental habits can bear with safety an almost incredible amount of brain-toil, provided he is permitted to work without distraction or excitement, in the absence of disquieting cares and anxieties.

It is not brain-work, in fact, that kills, but brain-worry.

"

The girl, of course, has not the strength for the protracted effort of the matured man, nor is such effort often required of her. Her studying is done quietly at home, undisturbed, usually, by any such cares and responsibilities as the man encounters.

Hers is generally brain-work, not brain-worry.

Yet the few hours a day exhaust her, because her vital system, which supports her brain, is feeble and inefficient.

Either they disregard the tastes of the opposite sex, or else their conception of those tastes is erroneous. Men care comparatively little for erudition in women, but very much for physical beauty and good nature and sound sense.

How many conquests does the blue-stocking make through her extensive knowledge of history?

"

Mammas anxious to make their daughters attractive could scarcely choose a course more fatal than this which sacrifices the body to the mind. Either they disregard the tastes of the opposite sex, or else their conception of those tastes is erroneous.

Men care comparatively little for erudition in women, but very much for physical beauty and good nature and sound sense.

How many conquests does the blue-stocking make through her extensive knowledge of history?"

Are not the majority of our women to-day, especially in town and city, physically weak? The writers on nervous disorders speak of the astounding increase of such diseases among us, of late years, in both sexes, but especially among the women.

General debility is heard of nowadays almost as often as General Grant.

Most of our women think two miles, or even less, a long distance to walk, even at a dawdling pace, while few of them have really strong chests, backs, or arms.

The measured precision of that lady's stroke, the stately poise of the body and head, and the clean, neat, and effective feathering, would have done credit to an old Oxford oar.

What woman has done, woman may do.

Bind one arm in a sling, and keep it utterly idle for a month, and meanwhile ply the other busily with heavy work, such as swinging a hammer, axe, or dumb-bell, and is it hard to say which will be the healthier, the plumper, the …

Will her children like any better to inherit the same from her? In our Christian lands, we find, if history be correct, that the great men have almost invariably had remarkable mothers, while their fathers were as often nothing unusual. The Sandwich Island proverb,

"If strong be the frame of the mother, her sons will make laws for the people,"

suggests truths that will hold good in many other places besides the Sandwich Islands.

The very nervousness and worry which used to be so wearing, at the sudden and ceaseless calls of the day, have gone, and for the reason that strong nerves and strong muscles are very liable to go together, and not to mind these things.

What does the athlete at the top of his condition know about nervousness? He is blithe as a lark all the day long.

Dr. Mitchell says:

Even if the strong man does occasionally become jaded, he knows, as Hughes did, how to get back his strength and snap, and that a tired man is many removes from a tired-out one.

There is a great deal in knowing whether your work is overdoing you or simply tiring you.

One of the strongest and best oarsmen Harvard ever had, used, at first, to think he ought to stop rowing when he began to perspire, and was quite astounded when an older man told him that that was only the beginning of the real work.

Daniel O'Connell was a man of sturdier body even than Webster, of whom Wendell Phillips says: "He was the greatest orator that ever spoke English.

A little O'Connell would have been no O'Connell. Every attitude was beauty, every gesture grace.

There was a magnetism that melted every will into his."

See what Maclaren[F] did for the Radley and Magdalen boys in one hour a week! see what Sargent[G] did in our country for two hundred youth in two hours a week, and with wooden dumb-bells, very light clubs, and a few pulley-weights at that!

Let people at once and forever get rid of the notion that this exercise is a mere play-spell, or that it is only good to make athletes or acrobats.

It is as much a branch of education as any taught in our schools to-day;

Frequently the apparatus getting loose, or worn, or out of repair, remains so.

The director is little more than a janitor, and is so regarded.

In many instances he does so little as to render this opinion a just one. Imperfect ventilation, and in winter lack of proper warmth, help to make it unattractive. The newly-arrived Freshman is generally run down and thin from overwork in preparing himself for college.

Indeed, the latter do not regard him as an equal at all, and until they do so with good reason, there is little prospect of improvement in this direction.

A doctor as ill up to his work as the average college gymnasium director would soon be without a patient.

Nor are the gymnasiums of our cities and towns much better off. New York city to-day, with one or two exceptions, is utterly without a gymnasium worthy of her.

Yet in that day gymnasiums at the colleges were almost unknown, while now they are general.

Does the gymnasium, then, pay? Yes, like a bath-tub—if used, and used sensibly; but if not, not.

Then, as it is used so little, is it worth having?

The first building and apparatus might be grand, fitted up with nearly all that could be desired, but the gymnasium lacked a masterhead who should show its possibilities.

Gymnasium and apparatus were like an engine without steam.

The second building was not of much account as a building, but quite all that was needed for the real end in view.

What parent believes that any hour in that week was better spent—better for the comfort, for the welfare of the boy, or better in fitting him for future usefulness—or what nearly so well?

Most boys waste that much time nearly every day.

Look, too, at the benefit to the boy in all his after-life. Indeed, does not this hour a week, in some instances, insure an after-life, and snatch not a few from an early grave?

And he well adds: "

Now who shall tell the value of these five inches of chest, five inches of additional space for the heart and lungs to work in?

" Hardly five inches more of heart and lung room, though part of the gain must have been of course from the enlargement of the muscles on the side of the chest.

It will be remembered that Maclaren claimed[I] that just such a readjustment of the osseous framework would result.

Is not this, then, remaking a man?

Instead of a cramped stomach, half-used lungs, a thin, scrawny, caved-in make, poor pipe-stems of legs, with arms to match, almost every one under forty, at least, can in a very few months, by means of a series of exercises, change those same slender legs, …

He is simply showing the truth of Emerson's broad rule, that "in all human action those faculties will be strong which are used;" and of Maclaren's, "

Where the activity is, there will be the development.

"

A friend got him, for awhile, into a little athletic work—walking, running, and sparring—until he could trot three miles fairly, and till one day he walked forty-five—pretty well used up, to be sure, but he walked it.

Well, his appetite went up like a rocket.

Where the daintiest food would not tempt him before, he would now promptly hide a beefsteak weighing a clean pound at a meal, and that no matter if cooked in some roadside eating-house, where nothing was neat or tidy, and flies abounded almost as they …

Carey is a great-grandfather, and is sixty-four years old, and Marsh sixty-three. Both had trained for the walk. It is understood that they will walk again in New York."

Sixty miles a day for three days and a half, and by a great-grandfather at that! Any man, or any horse, might well hold that a good day's work.

This activity among men so far on in years seems surprising. And why?

… "strength, activity, and bodily faculties generally in pretty good preservation," and all that time could attend promptly to all the daily duties of an active business as he did, as Vanderbilt did, as Palmerston did, as Thiers did—is not the effort truly worth the making?

And who knows what he can do till he tries?

There are two classes of men in our cities and larger towns who, more than almost any others, need daily and systematic bodily exercise, in order to make them efficient for their duties, and something like what men in their lines ought to be.

and yet, after Maclaren had one of them exercising for but a brief period, but in a way to bring up his general strength, the soldier said, "

I feel twice the man I did for anything a man could be set to do.

" Would it hurt a fireman or a policeman any to have that feeling? Would the latter not be more inclined to rely on his own strength, and less on his club?

"We have recorded from time to time in the T—— various interesting police cases. With all our skill and experience, however, we could not prevent a shade of monotony stealing over them.

When in nine cases out of ten the picture presented is that of a policeman clubbing a man nearly to death, by what resource of rhetoric can you avoid monotony?

For the sake of variety, as well as for the public good, many people wish that a citizen would occasionally kill a brutal policeman;

To see two great, hulking six-footers, ignorant of the first rudiments of good sparring, actually whirling their fists round and round each other as if winding yarn, and with no sort of idea how to use even one hand, let alone two, was positively ridiculous.

A hundred-pound thief, handy with his fists and quick of foot, could have slapped their faces, and, if they could run no better than they sparred, could have been at the Battery before either of them was half-way.

And what good would their weapons have been? Their revolvers they would hardly dare to use in a crowded street at broad noon, nor would they have been justified in so doing.

… while some distance behind came one of those majestic but logy guardians of the peace, making about one foot to the other's two, and, finally, seeing how hopeless was the pursuit, bringing his club around and throwing it after the escaping thief—and with what result?

Excellent for the thief, for, instead of coming anywhere near him, it passed dangerously close to the abdomen of a worthy but obese citizen, who chanced to be passing that way.

At a public exhibition, held early in 1878, under the auspices of these very Metropolitan Police, at the Hippodrome, in New York, where doubtless the very best boxers on the whole force were on the boards, and with ten thousand spectators to spur them on …

on the contrary, he should rather excite our pity and commiseration—the five or six stone distributed over his body being composed wholly of adipose tissue.

He is thus as completely enveloped in blubber as though he were a whale or a seal.

His muscles being heavily weighted, his powers of locomotion are necessarily limited; and, handicapped in this manner, it is no easy task for him to drag his unwieldy frame on some sweltering 12th of August over the trying inequalities of a Highland moor."

His muscles being heavily weighted, his powers of locomotion are necessarily limited; and, handicapped in this manner, it is no easy task for him to drag his unwieldy frame on some sweltering 12th of August over the trying inequalities of a Highland moor."

The broken-winded man, or a man out of wind, is almost as useless in an emergency calling for sharp and sudden work as a broken-winded horse.

The standing around of the policeman, heavily shod and heavily clad, and the lazy, aimless walking, will never make him hardy, tough, and difficult to face, or likely not to use his club where a strong, quick man would never need it.

If walking with this new push is not hard enough on flat ground, try it up-hill.

It will not be long before these muscles will ache till it will seem as if you must have a whole gymnasium concealed in them somewhere.

Another exercise for the same muscles, which can also be learned in a moment, and a little of which will suffice at first, is running on the toes, or, rather, on the soles and toes.

You cannot bend over without using them. Weed awhile, and, unless already strong in the loins, they will ache.

A laboring man weak here would hardly be worth hiring.

A rowing-man weak here could never be a first-rate oar till he had trained away the weakness.

Indeed, it is no uncommon thing, especially among Englishmen, to find a man of very strong legs and waist, yet with but an indifferent chest and shoulders, and positively poor arms. Canon Kingsley had discovered this when he said to the British clergy, "

I should be ashamed of being weak. I could not do half the little good I do here if it were not for that strength and activity which some consider coarse and degrading.

Many clergymen would half kill themselves if they did what I do. And though they might walk about as much, they would neglect exercise of the arms and chest, and become dyspeptic or consumptive."

… done with the dumb-bells could have been done nearly or quite as well with any other small, compact body of the same weight which could be easily grasped by the hands, such as a pair of window-weights, flat-irons, cobble-stones, or even chairs, whichever were convenient.

Where there's a will there's a way; and if one really means to get these or any other muscles strong and handsome, the way is really surprisingly simple and easy.

Now, instead of using the dumb-bells, stand erect, facing the pulley-weights at the gymnasium, or at home if you have them, taking care only that they weigh at least what the dumb-bells would.

Let the first order be, that all heads and necks be held erect.

Once these are placed in their right position, all other parts of their bodies at once fall into place.

The simplest way to insure this is to direct that every head and neck be drawn horizontally back, with the chin held about an inch above the level, until they are an inch or two back of the vertical.

If he must get up earlier, or get to his work earlier, or work faster while he does work, no matter. The prize is well worth any such sacrifice, and even five times it.

Emerson well says, "The first wealth is health," and no pains should be spared to secure it.

Lose it awhile and see. Exercise vigorously that hour afoot, or horseback, or on the water, making sure that during it you utterly ignore your business and usual thoughts.

One thing all who ever heard him sing would quickly concede, namely, that seldom had they anywhere heard so immense a voice as his. He said that he had also run two blocks in one breath.

He looked about the farthest remove from a consumptive—a short, stout, fat man, rather.

Now the in-door chest work above recommended, and the steady and vigorous daily out-door work, all aiming to deepen and strengthen the lungs, are well-nigh sure to bring decidedly favorable results;