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BERKSHIRE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



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14 hours a day until he was So years old; or who will explore the 

 wilderness of a continent like Africa, but such iron-framed men as 

 Livingstone and Stanley? Or who will be our grand poets and 

 artists, but those who can bear the consuming powers of burning 

 thought for years? Here we see a demand for muscle, bone and 

 sinew. In this respect there is, in our colleges and seminaries, a 

 prophecy of a golden future. Boys' and girls' muscles are being 

 educated as well as their heads. It will be a great achievement 

 when athletes, like Sullivan, shall come from our colleges with 

 hearts and heads equally educated. When the music of some secu- 

 lar songs was used in the singing of hymns among the early Meth- 

 odists, there was a rumpus made about it. Wesley solved the dif- 

 ficulty by declaring that the devil should not have all our best 

 music. So we say that the devil must not have the best muscle 

 employed in the pugilistic ring, in the circuses, in the go as you 

 please, in the wrestling match, in heaving the crow bar or throwing 

 quoits; but there is a demand for athleticity in the sober works of 

 life. Here are real battles to be fought. Muscle is demanded. 

 A young son of President Garfield came into his room one morn- 

 ing before the President was dressed and turned a hand-spring,- 

 and said triumphantly "There papa, don't you wish you could do 

 that?" No sooner said than the hero of Chickamauga turned as 

 neat a hand-spring as the athlete in the circus; and the son 

 thought his father was more a president than ever. The great 

 men of the war had to be men of great physical endurance. They 

 were manly men, men of iron, and so were the boys in the ranks; 

 and they did not need whiskey mixed with gunpowder to enable 

 them to endure the long march, or to stand up against the front 

 of the battle,- and it was the muscle and intelligence of the labor- 

 ing men of the North that gave us the victory. 



It may be said that there is not much demand for strength in 

 the fine arts. But this seems to me to be a mistake. There is no 

 delicacy of touch without educated strength. - Munkacksie, 

 whose delicacy of touch is shown in the painting of Christ before 

 Pilot, was brought up as a peasant. Do you wish to hear the del- 

 icate strains on the violin, strains that will move your whole soul ? 

 Put this instrument into the sinewy hands, supported by the ath- 

 letic form of an Ole Bull. All the powers of his gigantic frame 

 are brought into requisition. Do you desire delicacy in vocal per- 

 formance ? You cannot have it from a woman of weak and slender 

 muscle. Some of you remember Jenny Lind, with her broad 

 shoulders, ample chest, well knit frame, and her unwasp-like 



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