296 Timehrv. 
in origin and the gods are frugal in their gifts to us struggling mortals who must 
help ourselves with the knowledge and means at our disposal, and indeed this 
we most of us can do in an enlightened age like ours. 
Coming to the second aspect of physical culture we are face to face with a 
most interesting problem ; it is the physical development of the race along 
rational and normal lines within the reach of every class of the community and 
of both sexes. The problem is presented for our consideration not a day too 
soon. ‘The lesson lies at our very door here in Demerara. 
Let us take a stroll down Water street. What do wesee ? There are shops, 
tram-cars and donkey carts in plenty, but the chief claim on our attention is, 
I am sure, the human element and to the critical eye, which is not necessarily 
uncharitable, how much do we see that is deplorable. There is the skinny, ill- 
nourished East Indian, the emaciated, opium-eating, or pot-bellied 
Celestial, the stalwart Negro, many of them of both sexes with very fine 
physique, others of a degenerate type, and the diseased of all classes with regard 
to whom it need scarcely be observed that, ill-nourishment, opium-eating 
and other vices are mainly, if not entirely, responsible for their defection from 
the normal physical standard. It is useless to teach physical culture to the 
masses for most of them have no time for it, some of them do not require it 
and the vast majority would not be bothered with it. But in spite of disease 
and vice and every other drawback physical culture amongst the masses would, 
in my opinion, rid our cosmopolitan streets of at least twenty-five per cent. 
of the unsightly objects that pass for men and women leaving the ill-nourished, 
the diseased and the mendicant who, after all are like the poor always with us 
in every city in the world. It is not the purpose of this article to apply 
physical culture to the above human aspect of Water street but rather to the 
self-respecting members of our community who are engaged in business or 
mercantile pursuits or who fill the ranks of the Civil Service. In Water street 
this class is a numerous one and the effect of physical culture thereon is one 
that leaves no doubt in the mind of the writer. 
In the first place there is no question of expense whatever in connexion with 
physical culture nor is there of time or inconvenience ; 1¢ is solely a matter of 
will-power and determination and an elementary knowledge of human physio- 
logy and anatomy such as every sensible person should poscess. 
What are the chief things that the self-respecting man or woman most dis- 
likes to advertise in public and in person? Surely—bottle shoulders, a pot- 
belly, a slouching gait, and an ungainly figure. Now all these defects can be 
easily remedied by physical culture, and the habit of exercise can only lead 
to a shapely figure and handsome gait and bearing. 
There are well known stereotyped exercises for the weak shouldered, the 
adipose man or woman, and for the person whose spine or lungs are weak : 
simple exercises with or without apparatus described in little books published 
at ashilling or so that can be purchased at “The Argosy” Coy., Ltd., in the very 
centre of the Water street that I have chosen as a concrete example of the need 
for physical culture in this colony in particular and in the tropics in general. 
