But the plan here suggested will not only cover all he did, but more. Bryant does not seem to have cared for erectness, nor for a harmonious development of all the muscles. But had the amount of work he took been so directed, he might in youth have attained that harmony, and maintained it through life, as Vanderbilt maintained his erectness.
There need be little fear, then, that a right use of the gymnasium will overdo. No better safeguard against that could be had than a wise director, familiar with the capacities of his pupil, watching him daily, instilling sound principles, and giving him the very work he needs. Under such a tutor a young man who went to college, on receiving his degree, would, if his moral and mental duties were attended to, be graduated, not with an educated mind alone, but an educated body as well; not with merely a bright head, and a body and legs like a pair of tongs. If the history of brave, independent, earnest, pure men goes for anything, it will be found that as the body was healthy and strong, it has in many a pass in life directly aided moral culture and strength, and has kept the man from defiling that body which was meant to be kept sacred.
CHAPTER IX.
SOME RESULTS OF BRIEF SYSTEMATIC EXERCISE.
In a country like ours, where the masses are so intelligent, where so much care is taken to secure what is called a good education, the ignorance as to what can be done to the body by a little systematic physical education is simply marvellous. Few persons seem to be aware that any limb, or any part of it, can be developed from a state of weakness and deficiency to one of fulness, strength, and beauty, and that equal attention to all the limbs, and to the body as well, will work like result throughout. A man spends three or four weeks at the hay and grain harvest, and is surprised at the increased grip of his hands, and the new power of arm and back. He tramps through forests, and paddles up streams and lakes after game, and returns wondering how three or four miles on a level sidewalk could ever have tired him.
An acquaintance of ours, an active and skilled journalist, says that he once set out to saw twenty cords of wood, he was a slight, weak youth. He found he had not enough strength or wind to get through one cut of a log—that he had to constantly sit down and rest. People laughed at him, and at his thinking he could go through that mighty pile. But they did not know what was in him; for, sticking gamely to his self-imposed task, he says that in a very few days he found his stay improving rapidly, that he did not tire half so easily, and, more than that, that there began to come a feeling over him—a most welcome one—of new strength in his arms and across his chest; and that what had at first looked almost an impossibility had now become very possible, and was before long accomplished. Now, what he, by his manliness, found was fast doing so much for his arms and chest, was but a sample of what equally steady, systematic work might have done for his whole body. Indeed, a later experience of this same gentleman will be in place here; for at Dr. Sargent's gymnasium in New York, in the winter of 1878-'79, he, though a middle-aged man, increased the girth of his chest two inches and five-eighths in six weeks! and this working but one hour a day; and he found that he could not only do more work daily afterward at his profession, but better work as well.
The youth who works daily in a given line at the gymnasium as much expects that, before the year is over, not only will the muscles used decidedly increase in strength, but in size and shapeliness as well, as he does that the year's reading will improve his mind, or a year's labor bring him his salary. It is an every-day expression with him that such a fellow "got his arm up to" fifteen, or his chest to forty-odd inches, and so on. He sees nothing singular in this. He knows this one, who in a short time put half an inch on his forearm, or an inch; that one, whose thigh, or chest, or waist, or calf made equal progress. Group and classify these gains in many cases, and note the amount of work and the time taken in each, and soon one can tell pretty well what can be done in this direction. Few of our gymnasiums are so kept that their records will aid much in this inquiry, simply because the instructor either has no conception of the field before him, or, if he has, for some reason fails to improve the opportunity.
Look at what Maclaren effected (as described by him in his admirable "Physical Education"), not with here and there an isolated case, but with both boys and men turned in on him by the hundred, and in all stages of imperfect development! Take it first among the boys. Under systematic exercise, W——, a boy at Radley College, ten years old in June, 1861, had, seven years later, increased in height from 4 feet 6¾ inches to 5 feet 10¾ inches, or a gain of 16 inches in all; in weight from 66 pounds—light weight for a ten-year-old boy—to 156 pounds; far heavier than most boys at seventeen; showing an advance of 90 pounds. His forearm went from 7¼ to 11¾ inches—very large for a boy of seventeen, and decidedly above the average of that of most men; his upper arm from 7½ inches to 133/8—also far above the average at that age; while his chest had actually increased in girth from 26 inches—which was almost slender, even for a ten-year-old—to 39½ inches, which is all of two inches larger than the average man's.
His description of this boy was: "Height above average; other measurements average. From commencement, growth rapid, and sustained with regular and uniform development. The whole frame advancing to great physical power."
Another boy, H——, starting in June, 1860, when ten years old, 4 feet 6¼ inches high, and weighing 73 pounds—much heavier than the other at the start—in eight years gained 13½ inches, making him 5 feet 7¾ inches—of medium height for that age. He gained 71 pounds in the eight years, and at 144 pounds was better built than W—— at 156; for, though his forearm, starting at 8 inches, had become 11½, a quarter of an inch less than W——'s, yet his upper arm had gone from 8¾ to 13½ inches, or one-eighth of an inch larger, while his chest rose from 28¼ to 39 inches—within half an inch of the other's, though the latter was 3 inches taller.
He is described: "Height slightly above average; other measurements considerably above average. From commencement, growth and development regular and continuous. The whole frame perfectly developed for this period of life."