THE BUILDING OF THE BODY. 



BY W. C. JOSLIN. 



ALL EXEKCISES which give health, strength, and exhilaration of 

 both mind and body need no apostle in this year 1888. That 

 which is fashionable requires no advocate, and we can dispense with 

 the argument that the land of Plato and Aristotle deified the physical 

 powers, or that our great mother still wins her battles on Kugby field. 

 In the wonderful expansion of American life in the last score of 

 years — a development not alone along the lines of least resistance, as 

 in natural growth and commercial enlargement, but in all those things 

 which adorn life and beautify humanity, the ardor for vigorous ex- 

 ercise has advanced with more than equal footsteps. As a nation 

 we have been a long time in getting to know how to disport our- 

 selves, but now that we have learned, there is no mistaking the qual- 

 ity of our enjoyment, and no words can adequately picture its scope 

 and limits " vmperium sine fine dedV The passion for sound bodies 

 which fills our summer forests with amateur hunters and lights up 

 the Adirondacks with the gleam of camp fires, which covers our bor- 

 der seas with yachts, our streams with birchen barks, our mountains 

 with lusty climbers, and which graces with Pindar's bay the brow of 

 victorious youth at New London, is no mere evanescent fancy, but 

 has all the signs of well-sustained national sentiment. We have 

 become anglo-maniacs in so many silly, puerile ways that it is cheer- 

 ing to here see sense point with fashion. As Col. Higginson says, 

 " we have the one drop more of nervous fluid than our English cou- 

 sins, and need more than they the wholesome heartiness of full 

 muscular development. 



In its chief aspect then the mission of the believer in physical 

 training is easy, everyone agrees with him as to the result desired. 

 It is his task to guide and often to restrain. It is for him to sys- 

 tematically develop and regulate this passion, to so adjust the exer- 

 cise to the capacity of the pupil that all parts of the body will be 

 systematically developed, that one part will not be strong at the ex- 



