PHYSICAL EDUCATION. 19 



Dr. Winship, of Boston, lifted twenty-nine hundred pounds with the 

 aid of shoulder-straps ; and, unless the historians of Magna Groecia 

 were afflicted with an abnormal development of the myth-making 

 faculty, it would seem that their countryman Milo carried a bull-calf 

 around the arena, and thus carried it every day till he could tote a full- 

 grown steer. If the story is even half true, we need not wonder that 

 Milo's powers as a wrestler put a temporary stop to that sport as a 

 branch of the Olympian games, since " no man or god durst accept his 

 challenore." 



Wrestling is still the chief accomplishment of the Swiss village 

 champions, and would be the favorite pastime of our rural districts if 

 it had not been kept down by our sickly prejudice against all rough- 

 and-ready sports. Fifteen centuries ago the Olympic games were 

 abolished by the decree of a Christian emperor ; the moralists of Old 

 England have tabooed pugilism ; our Sabbatarians now include even 

 wrestling among the " blackguard sports " ; and Frederick Gerstaecker 

 jDredicts that the American Inquisition of a future century will sup- 

 press skating and ball-playing " as giving an undue ascendancy to the 

 animal energies over the moral part of our nature." For such a cen- 

 tury's sake we should hope that the Patagonian savages will prove un- 

 conquerable, for a year's life among healthy beasts would be a blessed 

 relief from a long sojourn in the land of an unmanned nation. 



But I trust that the propaganda of the Turnbund will save us from 

 such a fate. What a stimulus it would give to manly sjDorts and manly 

 virtues, nay, to the physical regeneration of the human race, if we 

 could made their yearly assembly a national festival ! The river-mead- 

 ows of Chattanooga, or the mountain amphitheatre near Huntsville, 

 Alabama, would make a first-class Olympia, and our Indian summer 

 would be a ready-made " weather-truce," without an expensive burnt- 

 offering to the sun. Olives, it is true, do not flourish on our soil ; our 

 mercenary souls need other inducements ; but the rent of reserved 

 seats and camp-tents would enable us to gild the crowns of the seve- 

 ral victors. Imagine the athletes of every village training for those 

 prizes thousands of boy-topers turning gymnasts, ward delegates 

 running for something besides office, and the members of a Young 

 Men's Association seeking paradise on this side of the grave ! 



With the decadence of athletic sports, games of skill come gener- 

 ally into favor ; hence, perhaps, the revival of archery in the United 

 States, and the pandemic spread of certain amusements which are 

 properly ladies' plays. Riding has gone almost out of fashion, though 

 few sportsmen will gainsay me if I assert that a day in the saddle is 

 worth a week of other sederitary pursuits. A Mexican boy would part 

 as soon with an arm as with his horse, and I never saw a finer picture 

 of exultant health than a cavalcade of muchachos dashins^ out into the 

 prairie at full speed, whooping and cheering, though perhaps on their 

 way to school or to 2ifuncion of some national saint. The deportment 



