Book: Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861

V >> Various >> Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861




Apparatus for lifting is not yet introduced into most gymnasiums, in
spite of the recommendations of the Roxbury Hercules: beside the fear
of straining, there is the cumbrous weight and cost of iron apparatus,
while, for some reason or other, no cheap and accurate dynamometer has
yet come into the market. Running and jumping, also, have as yet been
too much neglected in our institutions, or practised spasmodically
rather than systematically. It is singular how little pains have been
taken to ascertain definitely what a man can do with his body,--far
less, as Quetelet has observed, than in regard to any animal which man
has tamed, or any machine which he has invented. It is stated, for
instance, in Walker's "Manly Exercises," that six feet is the maximum
of a high leap, with a run,--and certainly one never finds in the
newspapers a record of anything higher; yet it is the English tradition,
that Ireland, of Yorkshire, could clear a string raised fourteen feet,
and that he once kicked a bladder at sixteen. No spring-board would
explain a difference so astounding. In the same way, Walker fixes the
limit of a long leap without a run at fourteen feet, and with a run at
twenty-two,--both being large estimates; and Thackeray makes his young
Virginian jump twenty-one feet and three inches, crediting George
Washington with a foot more. Yet the ancient epitaph of Phayllus the
Crotonian claimed for him nothing less than fifty-five feet, on an
inclined plane. Certainly the story must have taken a leap also.

These ladders, aspiring indefinitely into the air, like Piranesi's
stairways, are called technically peak-ladders; and dear banished
T.S.K., who always was puzzled to know why Mount Washington kept up such
a pique against the sky, would have found his joke fit these ladders
with great precision, so frequent the disappointment they create. But
try them, and see what trivial appendages one's legs may become,--since
the feet are not intended to touch these polished rounds. Walk up
backward on the under side, hand over hand, then forward; then go up
again, omitting every other round; then aspire to the third round, if
you will. Next grasp a round with both hands, give a slight swing of
the body, let go, and grasp the round above, and so on upward; then the
same, omitting one round, or more, if you can, and come down in the
same way. Can you walk up on _one_ hand? It is not an easy thing, but a
first-class gymnast will do it,--and Dr. Windship does it, taking only
every third round. Fancy a one-armed and legless hodman ascending the
under side of a ladder to the roof, and reflect on the conveniences of
gymnastic habits.

Here is a wooden horse; on this noble animal the Germans say that not
less than three hundred distinct feats can be performed. Bring yonder
spring-board, and we will try a few. Grasp these low pommels and vault
over the horse, first to the right, then again to the left; then with
one hand each way. Now spring to the top and stand; now spring between
the hands forward, now backward; now take a good impetus, spread your
feet far apart, and leap over it, letting go the hands. Grasp the
pommels again and throw a somerset over it,--coming down on your feet,
if the Fates permit. Now vault up and sit upon the horse, at one end,
knees the same side; now grasp the pommels and whirl yourself round
till you sit at the other end, facing the other way. Now spring up and
bestride it, whirl round till you bestride it the other way, at the
other end; do it once again, and, letting go your hand, seat yourself in
the saddle. Now push away the spring-board and repeat every feat without
its aid. Next, take a run and spring upon the end of the horse astride;
then walk over, supporting yourself on your hands alone, the legs not
touching; then backward, the same. It will be hard to balance yourself
at first, and you will careen uneasily one way or the other; no matter,
you will get over it somehow. Lastly, mount once more, kneel in the
saddle, and leap to the ground. It appears at first ridiculously
impracticable, the knees seem glued to their position, and it looks
as if one would fall inevitably on his face; but falling is hardly
possible. Any novice can do it, if he will only have faith. You shall
learn to do it from the horizontal bar presently, where it looks much
more formidable.

But first you must learn some simpler exercises on this horizontal bar:
you observe that it is made movable, and may be placed as low as your
knee, or higher than your hand can reach. This bar is only five inches
in circumference; but it is remarkably strong and springy, and therefore
we hope secure, though for some exercises our boys prefer to substitute
a larger one. Try and vault it, first to the right, then to the left, as
you did with the horse; try first with one hand, then see how high
you can vault with both. Now vault it between your hands, forward and
backward: the latter will baffle you, unless you have brought an unusual
stock of India-rubber in your frame, to begin with. Raise it higher
and higher, till you can vault it no longer. Now spring up on the bar,
resting on your palms, and vault over from that position with a swing of
your body, without touching the ground; when you have once managed this,
you can vault as high as you can reach: double-vaulting this is called.
Now put the bar higher than your head; grasp it with your hands, and
draw yourself up till you look over it; repeat this a good many times:
capital practice this, as is usually said of things particularly
tiresome. Take hold of the bar again, and with a good spring from the
ground try to curl your body over it, feet foremost. At first, in all
probability, your legs will go angling in the air convulsively, and come
down with nothing caught; but ere long we shall see you dispense with
the spring from the ground and go whirling over and over, as if the bar
were the axle of a wheel and your legs the spokes. Now spring upon the
bar, supporting yourself on your palms, as before; put your hands a
little farther apart, with the thumbs forward, then suddenly bring up
your knees on the bar and let your whole body go over forward: you will
not fall, if your hands have a good grasp. Try it again with your feet
outside your hands, instead of between them; then once again flinging
your body off from the bar and describing a long curve with it, arms
stiff: this is called the Giant's Swing. Now hang to the bar by the
knees,--by both knees; do not try it yet with one; then seize the bar
with your hands and thrust the legs still farther and farther forward,
pulling with your arms at the same time, till you find yourself sitting
unaccountably on the bar itself. This our boys cheerfully denominate
"skinning the cat," because the sensations it suggests, on a first
experiment, are supposed to resemble those of pussy with her skin drawn
over her head; but, after a few experiments, it seems like stroking the
fur in the right direction, and grows rather pleasant.

Try now the parallel bars, the most invigorating apparatus of the
gymnasium, and in its beginnings "accessible to the meanest capacity,"
since there are scarcely any who cannot support themselves by the hands
on the bars, and not very many who cannot walk a few steps upon the
palms, at the first trial. Soon you will learn to swing along these bars
in long surges of motion, forward and backward; to go through them, in
a series of springs from the hand only, without a jerk of the knees; to
turn round and round between them, going forward or backward all the
while; to vault over them and under them in complicated ways; to turn
somersets in them and across them; to roll over and over on them as
a porpoise seems to roll in the sea. Then come the "low-standing"
exercises, the grasshopper style of business; supporting yourself now
with arms not straight, but bent at the elbow, you shall learn to raise
and lower your body and to hold or swing yourself as lightly in that
position as if you had not felt pinioned and paralyzed hopelessly at the
first trial; and whole new systems of muscles shall seem to shoot out
from your shoulder-blades to enable you to do what you could not have
dreamed of doing before. These bars are magical,--they are conduits of
power; you cannot touch them, you cannot rest your weight on them in the
slightest degree, without causing strength to flow into your body as
naturally and irresistibly as water into the aqueduct-pipe when you turn
it on. Do you but give the opportunity, and every pulsation of blood
from your heart is pledged for the rest.

These exercises, and such as these, are among the elementary lessons of
gymnastic training. Practise these thoroughly and patiently, and you
will in time attain evolutions more complicated, and, if you wish, more
perilous. Neglect these, to grasp at random after everything which you
see others doing, and you will fail like a bookkeeper who is weak in
the multiplication-table. The older you begin, the more gradual the
preparation must be. A respectable middle-aged citizen, bent on
improving his _physique_, goes into a gymnasium, and sees slight,
smooth-faced boys going gayly through a series of exercises which show
their bodies to be a triumph, not a drag, and he is assured that the
same might be the case with him. Off goes the coat of our enthusiast and
in he plunges; he gripes a heavy dumb-bell and strains one shoulder,
hauls at a weight-box and strains the other, vaults the bar and bruises
his knee, swings in the rings once or twice till his hand slips and he
falls to the floor. No matter, he thinks the cause demands sacrifices;
but he subsides, for the next fifteen minutes, into more moderate
exercises, which he still makes immoderate by his awkward way of doing
them. Nevertheless, he goes home, cheerful under difficulties, and will
try again to-morrow. To-morrow finds him stiff, lame, and wretched; he
cannot lift his arm to his face to shave, nor lower it sufficiently to
pull his boots on; his little daughter must help him with his shoes,
and the indignant wife of his bosom must put on his hat, with that
ineffectual one-sidedness to which alone the best-regulated female mind
can attain, in this difficult part of costuming. His sorrows increase
as the day passes; the gymnasium alone can relieve them, but his soul
shudders at the remedy; and he can conceive of nothing so absurd as a
first gymnastic lesson, except a second one. But had he been wise enough
to place himself under an experienced adviser at the very beginning, he
would have been put through a few simple movements which would have sent
him home glowing and refreshed and fancying himself half-way back to
boyhood again; the slight ache and weariness of next day would have
been cured by next day's exercise; and after six months' patience, by a
progress almost imperceptible, he would have found himself, in respect
to strength and activity, a transformed man.

Most of these discomforts, of course, are spared to boys; their frames
are more elastic and less liable to ache and strain. They learn
gymnastics, as they learn everything else, more readily than their
elders. Begin with a boy early enough, and if he be of a suitable
temperament, he can learn in the gymnasium all the feats usually seen in
the circus-ring, and could even acquire more difficult ones, if it were
worth his while to try them. This is true even of the air-somersets and
hand-springs which are not so commonly cultivated by gymnasts; but it is
especially true of all exercises with apparatus. It is astonishing how
readily our classes pick up any novelty brought into town by a strolling
company,--holding the body out horizontally from an upright pole, or
hanging by the back of the head, or touching the head to the heels,
though this last is oftener tried than accomplished. They may be seen
practising these antics, at all spare moments, for weeks, until some
later hobby drives them away. From Blondin downwards, the public feats
derive a large part of their wonder from the imposing height in the air
at which they are done. Many a young man who can swing himself more
than his own length on the horizontal ladder at the gymnasium has yet
shuddered at _l'echelle perilleuse_ of the Hanlons; and I noticed that
even the simplest of their performances, such as holding by one hand, or
hanging by the knees, seemed perfectly terrific when done at a height
of twenty or thirty feet in the air, even to those who had done them a
hundred times at a lower level. It was the nerve that was astounding,
not the strength or skill; but the eye found it hard to draw the
distinction. So when a gymnastic friend of mine, crossing the
ocean lately, amused himself with hanging by one leg to the
mizzen-topmast-stay, the boldest sailors shuddered, though the feat
itself was nothing, save to the imagination.

Indeed, it is almost impossible for an inexperienced spectator to form
the slightest opinion as to the comparative difficulty or danger of
different exercises, since it is the test of merit to make the hardest
things look easy. Moreover, there may be a distinction between two
feats almost imperceptible to the eye,--a change, for instance, in the
position of the hands on a bar,--which may at once transform the thing
from a trifle to a wonder. An unpractised eye can no more appreciate
the difficulty of a gymnastic exercise by seeing it executed, than an
inexperienced ear, of the perplexities of a piece of music by hearing it
played.

The first effect of gymnastic exercise is almost always to increase the
size of the arms and the chest; and new-comers may commonly be known by
their frequent recourse to the tape-measure. The average increase among
the students of Harvard University during the first three months of the
gymnasium was nearly two inches in the chest, more than one inch in the
upper arm, and more than half an inch in the fore-arm. This was far
beyond what the unassisted growth of their age would account for; and
the increase is always very marked for a time, especially with thin
persons. In those of fuller habit the loss of flesh may counterbalance
the gain in muscle, so that size and weight remain the same; and in all
cases the increase stops after a time, and the subsequent change is
rather in texture than in volume. Mere size is no index of strength: Dr.
Windship is scarcely larger or heavier now than when he had not half his
present powers.

In the vigor gained by exercise there is nothing false or morbid; it
is as reliable as hereditary strength, except that it is more easily
relaxed by indolent habits. No doubt it is aggravating to see some
robust, lazy giant come into the gymnasium for the first time, and by
hereditary muscle shoulder a dumb-bell which all your training has
not taught you to handle. No matter; it is by comparing yourself with
yourself that the estimate is to be made. As the writing-master exhibits
with triumph to each departing pupil the uncouth copy which he wrote
on entering, so it will be enough to you, if you can appreciate your
present powers with your original inabilities. When you first joined the
gymnastic class, you could not climb yonder smooth mast, even with all
your limbs brought into service; now you can do it with your hands
alone. When you came, you could not possibly, when hanging by your hands
to the horizontal bar, raise your feet as high as your head,--nor could
you, with any amount of spring from the ground, curl your body over the
bar itself; now you can hang at arm's length and fling yourself over it
a dozen times in succession. At first, if you lowered yourself with bent
elbows between the parallel bars, you could not by any manoeuvre get up
again, but sank to the ground a hopeless wreck; now you can raise and
lower yourself an indefinite number of times. As for the weights and
clubs and dumb-bells, you feel as if there must be some jugglery about
them,--they have grown so much lighter than they used to be. It is you
who have gained a double set of muscles to every limb; that is all.
Strike out from the shoulder with your clenched hand; once your arm was
loose-jointed and shaky; now it is firm and tense, and begins to feel
like a natural arm. Moreover, strength and suppleness have grown
together; you have not stiffened by becoming stronger, but find yourself
more flexible. When you first came here, you could not touch your
fingers to the ground without bending the knees, and now you can place
your knuckles on the floor; then you could scarcely bend yourself
backward, and now you can lay the back of your head in a chair, or walk,
without crouching forward, under a bar less than three feet from
the ground. You have found, indeed, that almost every feat is done
originally by sheer strength, and then by agility, requiring very little
expenditure of force after the precise motion is hit upon; at first
labor, puffing, and a red face,--afterwards ease and the graces.

To a person who begins after the age of thirty or thereabouts, the
increase of strength and suppleness, of course, comes more slowly; yet
it comes as surely, and perhaps it is a more permanent acquisition, less
easily lost again, than in the softer frame of early youth. There is no
doubt that men of sixty have experienced a decided gain in strength and
health by beginning gymnastic exercises even at that age, as Socrates
learned to dance at seventy; and if they have practised similar
exercises all their lives, so much is added to their chance of
preserving physical youthfulness to the last. Jerome and Gabriel Ravel
are reported to have spent near three-score years on the planet which
their winged feet have so lightly trod; and who will dare to say how
many winters have passed over the head of the still young and graceful
Papanti?

Dr. Windship's most important experience is, that strength is to a
certain extent identical with health, so that every increase in muscular
development is an actual protection against disease. Americans, who are
ashamed to confess to doing the most innocent thing for the sake of mere
enjoyment, must be cajoled into every form of exercise under the plea of
health. Joining, the other day, in a children's dance, I was amused by a
solemn parent who turned to me, in the midst of a Virginia reel, still
conscientious, though breathless, and asked if I did not consider
dancing to be, on the whole, a _healthy_ exercise? Well, the gymnasium
is healthy; but the less you dwell on that fact, the better, after you
have once entered it. If it does you good, you will enjoy it; and if
you enjoy it, it will do you good. With body, as with soul, the highest
experience merges duty in pleasure. The better one's condition is, the
less one has to think about growing better, and the more unconsciously
one's natural instincts guide the right way.

When ill, we eat to support life; when well, we eat because the food
tastes good. It is a merit of the gymnasium, that, when properly taken,
it makes one forget to think about health or anything else that is
troublesome; "a man remembereth neither sorrow nor debt"; cares must be
left outside, be they physical or metaphysical, like canes at the door
of a museum.

No doubt, to some it grows tedious. It shares this objection with all
means of exercise. To be an American is to hunger for novelty; and all
instruments and appliances, especially, require constant modification:
we are dissatisfied with last winter's skates, with the old boat, and
with the family pony. So the zealot finds the gymnasium insufficient
long before he has learned half the moves. To some temperaments it
becomes a treadmill, and that, strangely enough, to diametrically
opposite temperaments. A lethargic youth, requiring great effort to keep
himself awake between the exercises, thinks the gymnasium slow, because
he is; while an eager, impetuous young fellow, exasperated because
he cannot in a fortnight draw himself up by one hand, finds the same
trouble there as elsewhere, that the laws of Nature are not fast enough
for his inclinations. No one without energy, no one without patience,
can find permanent interest in a gymnasium; but with these qualities,
and a modest willingness to live and learn, I do not see why one should
ever grow tired of the moderate use of its apparatus. For one, I really
never enter it without exhilaration, or leave it without a momentary
regret: there are always certain special new things on the docket for
trial; and when those are settled, there will be something more. It is
amazing what a variety of interest can be extracted from those few bits
of wood and rope and iron. There is always somebody in advance, some
"man on horseback" on a wooden horse, some India-rubber hero, some
slight and powerful fellow who does with ease what you fail to do with
toil, some terrible Dr. Windship with an ever-waxing dumb-bell. The
interest becomes semi-professional. A good gymnast enjoys going into
a new and well-appointed establishment, precisely as a sailor enjoys
a well-rigged ship; every rope and spar is scanned with intelligent
interest; "we know the forest round us as seamen know the sea." The
pupils talk gymnasium as some men talk horse. A particularly smooth
and flexible horizontal pole, a desirable pair of parallel bars, a
remarkably elastic spring-board,--these are matters of personal pride,
and described from city to city with loving enthusiasm. The gymnastic
apostle rises to eloquence in proportion to the height of the
handswings, and points his climax to match the peak-ladders.

An objection frequently made to the gymnasium, and especially by anxious
parents, is the supposed danger of accident. But this peril is obviously
inseparable from all physical activity. If a man never leaves his house,
the chances undoubtedly are, that he will never break his leg, unless
upon the stairway; but if he is always to stay in the house, he might
as well have no legs at all. Certainly we incur danger every time we go
outside the front-door; but to remain always on the inside would prove
the greatest danger of the whole. When a man slips in the street and
dislocates his arm, we do not warn him against walking, but against
carelessness. When a man is thrown from his horse and gratifies the
surgeons by a beautiful case of compound fracture, we do not advise him
to avoid a riding-school, but to go to one. Trivial accidents are not
uncommon in the gymnasium, severe ones are rare, fatal ones almost
unheard-of,--which is far more than can be said of riding, driving,
hunting, boating, skating, or even "coasting" on a sled. Learning
gymnastics is like learning to swim,--you incur a small temporary risk
for the sake of acquiring powers that will lessen your risks in the end.
Your increased strength and agility will carry you past many unseen
perils hereafter, and the invigorated tone of your system will make
accidents less important, if they happen. Some trifling sprain causes
lameness for life, some slight blow brings on wasting disease, to
a person whose health is merely negative, not positive,--while a
well-trained frame throws it off in twenty-four hours. It is almost
proverbial of the gymnasium, that it cures its own wounds.

A minor objection is, that these exercises are not performed in the
open air. In summer, however, they may be, and in winter and in stormy
weather it is better that they should not be. Extreme cold is not
favorable to them; it braces, but stiffens; and the bars and ropes
become slippery and even dangerous. In Germany it is common to have a
double set of apparatus, out-doors and in-doors; and this would always
be desirable, but for the increased expense. Moreover, the gymnasium
should be taken in addition to out-door exercise, giving, for instance,
an hour a day to each, one for training, the other for oxygen. I know
promising gymnasts whose pallid complexions show that their blood is not
worthy of their muscle, and they will break down. But these cases are
rare, for the reason already hinted,--that nothing gives so good an
appetite for out-door life as this indoor activity. It alternates
admirably with skating, and seduces irresistibly into walking or rowing
when spring arrives.

My young friend Silverspoon, indeed, thinks that a good trot on a fast
horse is worth all the gymnastics in the world. But I learn, on inquiry,
that my young friend's mother is constantly imploring him to ride in
order to air her horses. It is a beautiful parental trait; but for those
born horseless, what an economical substitute is the wooden quadruped of
the gymnasium! Our Autocrat has well said, that the livery-stable horse
is "a profligate animal"; and I do not wonder that the Centaurs of old
should be suspected of having originated spurious coin. Undoubtedly it
was to pay for the hire of their own hoofs.

For young men in cities, too, the facilities for exercise are limited
not only by money, but by time. They must commonly take it after dark.
It is every way a blessing, when the gymnasium divides their evenings
with the concert, the book, or the public meeting. Then there is no
time left, and small temptation, for pleasures less pure. It gives an
innocent answer to that first demand for evening excitement which perils
the soul of the homeless boy in the seductive city. The companions whom
he meets at the gymnasium are not the ones whose pursuits of later
nocturnal hours entice him to sin. The honest fatigue of his exercises
calls for honest rest. It is the nervous exhaustion of a sedentary,
frivolous, or joyless life which madly tries to restore itself by the
other nervous exhaustion of debauchery. It is an old prescription,--

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