MUSCLES AND PHENOMENA OF CONTRACTION. 143 



peculiar training for an especial exertion, but to that 

 rounded training that makes for health. We all know that 

 properly directed exercise strengthens the muscles, vitalizes 

 the body and increases its powers of resistance and of work. 

 To the athlete such a system of rigorous training is recog- 

 nized by everybody to be indispensable. But not only the 

 soldier on his marches or the athlete in his contests, but the 

 minister, the teacher, the lawyer and the merchant as well 

 will later be called upon to undergo as much fatigue and will 

 have demands made upon their bodily strength no less than 

 the former. The many failures to meet these demands in 

 the sedentary vocations ought to be a warning. The intel- 

 lectual professions are rilled with many men who in spite of 

 their sincerest efforts, in spite of a real enthusiasm in 

 their work, drag themselves through their tasks with 

 languor and pain, weariness and discouragement, and with 

 the imminent possibility of a nervous break-down always 

 hanging over their heads, when by a properly exercised 

 and educated body they might have been enabled to prose- 

 cute their work with pleasure and comfort. 



What accounts for this seeming neglect of our bodily 

 health? The principal reason is no doubt the fierce com- 

 petition in the field of nerve and brain. From the nursery 

 to the college or university the nervous strain goes on. 

 Entrance tests, promotions, appointments to scholarships 

 or fellowships, competitive examinations, grades of merit, 

 late hours, weary reading, a slavishness to books, a strain- 

 ing after facts, a crowding and cramming, until finally the 

 man is brought to a halt in his mad career by finding his 

 body weakening under the protracted pressure, and his 

 energies both of mind and frame irreparably injured. In 

 America especially a premium is put upon intellectual pre- 

 cocity. Pale, bookish children are put on the grandstand 

 for exhibition, to be admired by parents and patrons, while 

 the ruddy-faced, broad-shouldered boy whose mind too fre- 

 quently runs to games and to whom the attractions which 

 field and meadow, and wood and stream afford are prefer- 



