He was impressed and taken aback with what I had said, but did not at the moment make any observation on the subject. On the next day, however, happening to meet my friend the lawyer, I learned that he had informed him that he feared he had acted wrongly toward me, and had, in addition, done some injustice to my profession. The result was, that very shortly after both he and his two sons visited my rooms during one of my exhibitions, or rather lectures, that I was illustrating with gymnastic feats. He was struck with my observations and with the performance of some of my pupils, as well as with the marked difference between their physique and activity and those of his own boys. For his edification and that of those who had come to witness the exhibition, I referred to the well known fact that the ancient Greeks and Romans were gymnasts, and that their nobles frequently contested in public for the prize; and besides, that he who performed the greatest feats of strength and agility was crowned with laurels. At the close of my lecture he came forward with a frankness and a manliness I was pleased to see, and made an ample apology for his treatment of me on a former occasion, and at once placed his two sons under my charge. In fact I had won, and when some months afterwards I presented him his two boys as strong as young lions and as agile as panthers, I noticed a tear of gratitude in his eye, and we have been warm friends ever since.
It is all a mistaken idea that a true course of physical training tends towards pugilism or to foster a spirit of aggression. The case is quite the reverse, for it engenders a spirit of nobility and generous manliness only. It is averse to treachery and meanness, and is indorsed by all the educational institutions in the land. Show me a college without a gymnasium or its physical culture and I shall be much astonished. It is now an accepted fact, that a true course of mental culture is impossible without a true course of physical training. For the student to succeed in the former, he must undergo the latter. They must travel side by side, irrespective of sex, and there must be teachers for both. One is the body and the other is the soul of the man, so to speak; and as a healthy brain and an unhealthy body are incompatible—are not to be found centered on the same person—we must see that the latter is always kept in order and at its best, and there is no fear for the success of the former.
One parting word, and I have done. All our physical organization has been constructed with a view to ministering to the comforts and the necessities of our body as a whole, as well as to our mind or soul. Of themselves, our physical organs know nothing, and are completely under the control of our immortal part. When, therefore, we find that the slightest feebleness or derangement on the part of any one of them results in the greatest discomfort to us, and when we find that, to support health and to pursue with effect any vocation in life, active or sedentary, it requires the fullest development of our muscles and all the parts of our frame, does it not behoove all those who have not yet turned their attention to the subject to take it up at once, and endeavor to achieve that state of physical perfection which is so necessary to their success and happiness in this world, if not in the next?