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

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




"Multa tulit fecitque puer, sudavit et alsit,
_Abstinuit venere et vino_."

There is another class of critics whose cant is simply can't, and who,
being unable or unwilling to surrender themselves to these simple
sources of enjoyment, are grandiloquent upon the dignity of manhood,
and the absurdity of full-grown men in playing monkey-tricks with their
bodies. Full-grown men? There is not a person in the world who can
afford to be a "full-grown man" through all the twenty-four hours. There
is not one who does not need, more than he needs his dinner, to have
habitually one hour in the day when he throws himself with boyish
eagerness into interests as simple as those of boys. No church or state,
no science or art, can feed us all the time; some morsels there must be
of simpler diet, some moments of unadulterated play. But dignity? Alas
for that poor soul whose dignity must be "preserved,"--preserved in
the right culinary sense, as fruits which are growing dubious in their
natural state are sealed up in jars to make their acidity presentable!
"There's beggary in the love that can be reckoned," and degradation in
the dignity that has to be preserved. Simplicity is the only dignity. If
one has not the genuine article, no affluence of starch, no snow-drift
of white-linen decency, will furnish any substitute. If one has it, he
will retain it, whether he stand on his head or his heels. Nothing
is really undignified but affectation or conceit; and for the total
extinction and annihilation of every vestige of these, there are few
things so effectual as athletic exercises.

Still another objection is that of the medical men, that the gymnasium,
as commonly used, is not a specific prescription for the special disease
of the patient. But setting aside the claims of the system of applied
gymnastics, which Ling and his followers have so elaborated, it is
enough to answer, that the one great fundamental disorder of all
Americans is simply nervous exhaustion, and that for this the gymnasium
can never be misdirected, though it may be used to excess. Of course one
can no more cure over-work of brain by over-work of body than one
can restore a wasted candle by lighting it at the other end. But by
subtracting an hour a day from the present amount of purely intellectual
fatigue, and inserting that quantum of bodily fatigue in its place, you
begin an immediate change in your conditions of life. Moreover, the
great object is not merely to get well, but to keep well. The exhaustion
of over-work can almost always be cured by a water-cure, or by a voyage,
which is a salt-water cure; but the problem is, how to make the whole
voyage of life perpetually self-curative. Without this, there is
perpetual dissatisfaction and chronic failure. Emerson well says, "Each
class fixes its eye on the advantages it has not,--the refined on rude
strength, the democrat on birth and breeding." This is the aim of the
gymnasium, to give to the refined this rude strength, or its better
substitute, refined strength. It is something to secure to the student
or the clerk the strong muscles, hearty appetite, and sound sleep of the
sailor and the ploughman,--to enable him, if need be, to out-row the
fisherman, and out-run the mountaineer, and lift more than his porter,
and to remember head-ache and dyspepsia only as he recalls the primeval
whooping-cough of his childhood. I am one of those who think that the
Autocrat rides his hobby of the pavements a little too far; but it is
useless to deny, that, within the last few years of gymnasiums and
boat-clubs, the city has been gaining on the country, in physical
development. Here in our town we had all the city- and college-boys
assembled in July to see the regattas, and all the country-boys in
September to see the thousand-dollar base-ball match; and it was
impossible to deny, whatever one's theories, that the physical
superiority lay for the time being with the former.

The secret is, that, though the country offers to farmers more oxygen
than to anybody in the city, yet not all dwellers in the country are
farmers, and even those who are such are suffering from other causes,
being usually the very last to receive those lessons of food and
clothing and bathing and ventilation which have their origin in cities.
Physical training is not a mechanical, but a vital process: no bricks
without straw; no good _physique_ without good materials and conditions.
The farmer knows, that, to rear a premium colt or calf, he must oversee
every morsel that it eats, every motion it makes, every breath it
draws,--must guard against over-work and under-work, cold and heat, wet
and dry. He remembers it for the quadrupeds, but he forgets it for his
children, his wife, and himself: so his cattle deserve a premium, and
his family does not.

Neglect is the danger of the country; the peril of the city is in living
too fast. All mental excitement acts as a stimulant, and, like all
stimulants, debilitates when taken in excess. This explains the
unnatural strength and agility of the insane, always followed by
prostration; and even moderate cerebral excitement produces similar
results, so far as it goes. Quetelet discovered that sometimes after
lecturing, or other special intellectual action, he could perform
gymnastic feats impossible to him at other times. The fact is
unquestionable; and it is also certain that an extreme in this direction
has precisely the contrary effect, and is fatal to the physical
condition. One may spring up from a task of moderate mental labor with a
sense of freedom like a bow let loose; but after an immoderate task
one feels like the same bow too long bent, flaccid, nerveless, all the
elasticity gone. Such fatigue is far more overwhelming than any mere
physical exhaustion. I have lounged into the gymnasium, after an
afternoon's skating, supposing myself quite tired, and have found myself
in excellent condition; and I have gone in after an hour or two of some
specially concentrated anxiety or thought, without being aware that
the body was at all fatigued, and found it good for nothing. Such
experiences are invaluable; all the libraries cannot so illustrate the
supremacy of immaterial forces. Thought, passion, purpose, expectation,
absorbed attention even, all feed upon the body's powers; let them
act one atom too intensely or one moment too long, and this wondrous
physical organization finds itself drained of its forces to support
them. It does not seem strange that strong men should have died by a
single ecstasy of emotion too convulsive, when we bear within us this
tremendous engine whose slightest pulsation so throbs in every fibre of
our frame.

The relation between mental culture and physical powers is a subject of
the greatest interest, as yet but little touched, because so few of our
physiologists have been practical gymnasts. Nothing is more striking
than the tendency of all athletic exercises, when brought to perfection,
to eliminate mere brute bulk from the competition, and give the palm
to more subtile qualities, agility, quickness, a good eye, a ready
hand,--in short, superior fineness of organization. Any clown can learn
the military manual exercise; but it needs brain-power to drill with
the Zouaves. Even a prize-fight tests strength less than activity and
"science." The game of base-ball, as played in our boyhood, was a
simple, robust, straightforward contest, where the hardest hitter
was the best man; but it is every year becoming perfected into a
sleight-of-hand, like cricket; mere strength is now almost valueless
in playing it, and it calls rather for the qualities of the
billiard-player. In the last champion-match at Worcester, nearly the
whole time was consumed in skilful feints and parryings, and it took
five days to make fifty runs. And these same characteristics mark
gymnastic exercises above all; men of great natural strength are very
apt to be too slow and clumsy for them, and the most difficult feats
are usually done by persons of comparatively delicate _physique_ and a
certain artistic organization. It is this predominance of the nervous
temperament which is yet destined to make American gymnasts the foremost
in the world.

Indeed, the gymnasium is as good a place for the study of human nature
as any. The perpetual analogy of mind and body can be appreciated only
where both are trained with equal system. In both departments the great
prizes are not won by the most astounding special powers, but by a
certain harmonious adaptation. There is a physical tact, as there is
a mental tact. Every process is accomplished by using just the right
stress at just the right moment; but no two persons are alike in the
length of time required for these little discoveries. Gymnastic genius
lies in gaining at the first trial what will cost weeks of perseverance
to those less happily gifted. And as the close elastic costume which is
worn by the gymnast, or should be worn, allows no merit or defect of
figure to be concealed, so the close contact of emulation exhibits all
the varieties of temperament. One is made indolent by success, and
another is made ardent; one is discouraged by failure, and another
aroused by it; one does everything best the first time and slackens ever
after, while another always begins at the bottom and always climbs to
the top.

One of the most enjoyable things in these mimic emulations is this
absolute genuineness in their gradations of success. In the great world
outside, there is no immediate and absolute test for merit. There are
cliques and puffings and jealousies, quarrels of authors, tricks of
trade, caucusing in politics, hypocrisy among the deacons. We distrust
the value of others' successes, they distrust ours, and we all sometimes
distrust our own. There are those who believe in Shakspeare, and those
who believe in Tupper. All merit is measured by sliding scales, and each
has his own theory of the sliding. In a dozen centuries it will all come
right, no doubt. In the mean time there is vanity in one half the world
and vexation of spirit in the other half, and each man joins each half
in turn. But once enter the charmed gate of the gymnasium, and you leave
shams behind. Though you be saint or sage, no matter, the inexorable
laws of gravitation are around you. If you flinch, you fail; if you
slip, you fall. That bar, that rope, that weight shall test you
absolutely. Can you handle it, it is well; but if not, stand aside for
him who can. You may have every other gift and grace, it counts for
nothing; he, not you, is the man for the hour. The code of Spanish
aristocracy is slight and flexible compared with this rigid precedence.
It is Emerson's Astraea. Each registers himself, and there is no appeal.
No use to kick and struggle, no use to apologize. Do not say that
to-night you are tired, last night you felt ill. These excuses may serve
for a day, but no longer. A slight margin is allowed for moods and
variations, but it is not great after all. One revels in this Palace
of Truth. Defeat itself is a satisfaction, before a tribunal of such
absolute justice.

This contributes to that healthful ardor with which, in these exercises,
a man forgets the things which are behind and presses forward to fresh
achievements. This perpetually saves from vanity; for everything seems
a trifle, when you have once attained to it. The aim which yesterday
filled your whole gymnastic horizon you overtake and pass as a boat
passes a buoy: until passed, it was a goal; when passed, a mere speck in
the horizon. Yesterday you could swing yourself three rounds upon the
horizontal ladder; to-day, after weeks of effort, you have suddenly
attained to the fourth, and instantly all that long laborious effort
vanishes, to be formed again between you and the fifth round: five, five
is the only goal for heroic labor to-day; and when five is attained,
there will be six, and so on while the Arabic numerals hold out. A
childish aim, no doubt; but is not this what we all recognize as the
privilege of childhood, to obtain exaggerated enjoyment from little
things? When you have come to the really difficult feats of the
gymnasium,--when you have conquered the "barber's curl" and the
"peg-pole,"--when you can draw yourself up by one arm, and perform the
"giant's swing" over and over, without changing hands, and vault the
horizontal bar as high as you can reach it,--when you can vault across
the high parallel bars between your hands backward, or walk through them
on your palms with your feet in the vicinity of the ceiling,--then you
will reap the reward of your past labors, and may begin to call yourself
a gymnast.

It is pleasant to think, that, so great is the variety of exercises in
the gymnasium, even physical deficiencies and deformities do not wholly
exclude from its benefits. I have seen an invalid girl, so lame from
childhood that she could not stand without support, whose general health
had been restored, and her bust and arms made a study for a sculptor, by
means of gymnastics. Nay, there are odd compensations of Nature by which
even exceptional formations may turn to account in athletic exercises. A
squinting eye is a treasure to a boxer, a left-handed batter is a prize
in a cricketing eleven, and one of the best gymnasts in Chicago is an
individual with a wooden leg, which he takes off at the commencement
of affairs, thus economizing weight and stowage, and performing
achievements impossible except to unipeds.

In the enthusiasm created by this emulation, there is necessarily some
danger of excess. Dr. Windship approves of exercising only every other
day in the gymnasium; but as most persons take their work in a more
diluted form than his, they can afford to repeat it daily, unless warned
by headache or languor that they are exceeding their allowance. There
is no good in excess; our constitutions cannot be hurried. The law is
universal, that exercise strengthens as long as nutrition balances it,
but afterwards wastes the very forces it should increase. We cannot make
bricks faster than Nature supplies us with straw.

It is one good evidence of the increasing interest in these exercises,
that the American gymnasiums built during the past year or two have far
surpassed all their predecessors in size and completeness, and have
probably no superiors in the world. The Seventh Regiment Gymnasium in
New York, just opened by Mr. Abner S. Brady, is one hundred and eighty
feet by fifty-two, in its main hall, and thirty-five feet in height,
with nearly a thousand pupils. The beautiful hall of the Metropolitan
Gymnasium, in Chicago, measures one hundred and eight feet by eighty,
and is twenty feet high at the sides, with a dome in the centre, forty
feet high, and the same in diameter. Next to these probably rank the
new gymnasium at Cincinnati, the Tremont Gymnasium at Boston, and the
Bunker-Hill Gymnasium at Charlestown, all recently opened. Of college
institutions the most complete are probably those at Cambridge and New
Haven,--the former being eighty-five feet by fifty, and the latter one
hundred feet by fifty, in external dimensions. The arrangements for
instruction are rather more systematic at Harvard, but Yale has several
valuable articles of apparatus--as the rack-bars and the series
of rings--which have hardly made their appearance, as yet, in
Massachusetts, though considered indispensable in New York.

Gymnastic exercises are as yet but very sparingly introduced into our
seminaries, primary or professional, though a great change is already
beginning. Frederick the Great complained of the whole Prussian
school-system of his day, because it assumed that men were originally
created for students and clerks, whereas his Majesty argued that the
very shape of the human body rather proved them to be meant by Nature
for postilions. Until lately all our educational plans have assumed man
to be a merely sedentary being; we have employed teachers of music and
drawing to go from school to school to teach those elegant arts, but
have had none to teach the art of health. Accordingly, the pupils have
exhibited more complex curves in their spines than they could possibly
portray on the blackboard, and acquired such discords in their nervous
systems as would have utterly disgraced their singing. It is something
to have got beyond the period when active sports were actually
prohibited. I remember when there was but one boat owned by a Cambridge
student,--the owner was the first of his class, by the way, to get his
name into capitals in the "Triennial Catalogue" afterwards,--and that
boat was soon reported to have been suppressed by the Faculty, on the
plea that there was a college law against a student's keeping domestic
animals, and a boat was a domestic animal within the meaning of the
statute. Manual labor was thought less reprehensible; but schools on
this basis have never yet proved satisfactory, because either the hands
or the brains have always come off second-best from the effort to
combine: it is a law of Nature, that after a hard day's work one does
not need more work, but play. But in many of the German common-schools
one or two hours are given daily to gymnastic exercises with apparatus,
with sometimes the addition of Wednesday or Saturday afternoon; and this
was the result, as appears from Gutsmuth's book, of precisely the same
popular reaction against a purely intellectual system which is visible
in our community now. In the French military school at Joinville, the
degree of Bachelor of Agility is formally conferred; but Horace Mann's
remark still holds good, that it is seldom thought necessary to train
men's bodies for any purpose except to destroy those of other men.
However, in view of the present wise policy of our leading colleges,
we shall have to stop croaking before long, especially as enthusiastic
alumni already begin to fancy a visible improvement in the _physique_ of
graduating classes on Commencement Day.

It would be unpardonable, in this connection, not to speak a good word
for the hobby of the day,--Dr. Lewis, and his system of gymnastics, or,
more properly, of calisthenics. Aside from a few amusing games, there is
nothing very novel in the "system," except the man himself. Dr. Windship
had done all that was needed in apostleship of severe exercises, and
there was wanting some man with a milder hobby, perfectly safe for a
lady to drive. The Fates provided that man, also, in Dr. Lewis,--so
hale and hearty, so profoundly confident in the omnipotence of his own
methods and the uselessness of all others, with such a ready invention,
and such an inundation of animal spirits that he could flood any
company, no matter how starched or listless, with an unbounded appetite
for ball-games and bean-games. How long it will last in the hands of
others than the projector remains to be seen, especially as some of his
feats are more exhausting than average gymnastics; but, in the mean
time, it is just what is wanted for multitudes of persons who find or
fancy the real gymnasium to be unsuited to them. It will especially
render service to female pupils, so far as they practise it; for the
accustomed gymnastic exercises seem never yet to have been rendered
attractive to them, on any large scale, and with any permanency. Girls,
no doubt, learn as readily as boys to row, to skate, and to swim,--any
muscular inferiority being perhaps counterbalanced in swimming by
their greater physical buoyancy, in skating by their dancing-school
experience, and in rowing by their music-lessons enabling them more
promptly to fall into regular time,--though these suggestions may all be
fancies rather than facts. The same points help them, perhaps, in the
lighter calisthenic exercises; but when they come to the apparatus, one
seldom sees a girl who takes hold like a boy: it, perhaps, requires a
certain ready capital of muscle, at the outset, which they have not at
command, and which it is tedious to acquire afterwards. Yet there seem
to be some cases, as with the classes of Mrs. Molineaux at Cambridge,
where a good deal of gymnastic enthusiasm is created among female
pupils, and it may be, after all, that the deficiency lies thus far in
the teachers.

Experience is already showing that the advantages of school-gymnasiums
go deeper than was at first supposed. It is not to be the whole object
of American education to create scholars or idealists, but to produce
persons of a solid strength,--persons who, to use the most expressive
Western phrase that ever was coined into five monosyllables, "will do to
tie to"; whereas to most of us it would be absurd to tie anything but
the Scriptural millstone. In the military school of Brienne, the only
report appended to the name of the little Napoleon Bonaparte was "Very
healthy"; and it is precisely this class of boys for whom there is least
place in a purely intellectual institution. A child of immense animal
activity and unlimited observing faculties, personally acquainted with
every man, child, horse, dog, in the township,--intimate in the families
of oriole and grasshopper, pickerel and turtle,--quick of hand and
eye,--in short, born for practical leadership and victory,--such a boy
finds no provision for him in most of our seminaries, and must, by his
constitution, be either truant or torment. The theory of the institution
ignores such aptitudes as his, and recognizes no merits save those of
some small sedentary linguist or mathematician,--a blessing to his
teacher, but an object of watchful anxiety to the family physician, and
whose career was endangering not only his health, but his humility.
Introduce now some athletic exercises as a regular part of the
school-drill, instantly the rogue finds his legitimate sphere, and leads
the class; he is no longer an outcast, no longer has to look beyond the
school for companions and appreciation; while, on the other hand, the
youthful pedant, no longer monopolizing superiority, is brought down to
a proper level. Presently comes along some finer fellow than either, who
cultivates all his faculties, and is equally good at spring-board and
black-board; and straightway, since every child wishes to be a Crichton,
the whole school tries for the combination of merits, and the grade of
the juvenile community is perceptibly raised.

What is true of childhood is true of manhood also. What a shame it is
that even Kingsley should fall into the cant of deploring maturity as a
misfortune, and declaring that our freshest pleasures come "before
the age of fourteen"! Health is perpetual youth,--that is, a state of
positive health. Merely negative health, the mere keeping out of the
hospital for a series of years, is not health. Health is to feel the
body a luxury, as every vigorous child does,--as the bird does when it
shoots and quivers through the air, not flying for the sake of the goal,
but for the sake of the flight,--as the dog does when he scours madly
across the meadow, or plunges into the muddy blissfulness of the
stream. But neither dog nor bird nor child enjoys his cup of physical
happiness--let the dull or the worldly say what they will--with a
felicity so cordial as the educated palate of conscious manhood. To
"feel one's life in every limb," this is the secret bliss of which all
forms of athletic exercise are merely varying disguises; and it is
absurd to say that we cannot possess this when character is mature, but
only when it is half-developed. As the flower is better than the bud, so
should the fruit be better than the flower.

We need more examples of a mode of living which shall not alone be a
success in view of some ulterior object, but which shall be, in its
nobleness and healthfulness, successful every moment as it passes on.
Navigating a wholly new temperament through history, this American race
must of course form its own methods and take nothing at second-hand; but
the same triumphant combination of bodily and mental training which made
human life beautiful in Greece, strong in Rome, simple and joyous in
Germany, truthful and brave in England, must yet be moulded to a higher
quality amid this varying climate and on these low shores. The regions
of the world most garlanded with glory and romance, Attica, Provence,
Scotland, were originally more barren than Massachusetts; and there is
yet possible for us such an harmonious mingling of refinement and vigor,
that we may more than fulfil the world's expectation, and may become
classic to ourselves.

* * * * *


LAND-LOCKED.


Black lie the hills, swiftly doth daylight flee,
And, catching gleams of sunset's dying smile,
Through the dusk land for many a changing mile
The river runneth softly to the sea.

O happy river, could I follow thee!
O yearning heart, that never can be still!
O wistful eyes, that watch the steadfast hill,
Longing for level line of solemn sea!

Have patience; here are flowers and songs of birds,
Beauty and fragrance, wealth of sound and sight,
All summer's glory thine from morn till night,
And life too full of joy for uttered words.

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