INTRODUCTION.
This book is not intended as a mere manual for the special use of skilled professional or amateur athletes, though necessarily many of its details refer particularly to these classes. Its main purpose is to bring into consideration the high value, moral and intellectual as well as physical, of those exercises that develop healthy constitutions, cheerful minds, manly self-confidence, and appreciation of the beauties of nature and natural enjoyment. Nevertheless, these lines of Bunyan tell my preliminary experience: —
"Some said, John, print it; others said, Not so;
Some said, It might do good; others said, No."
So long as large numbers of our young people, of both sexes, are narrow-chested, thin-limbed, their muscles growing soft as their fat grows hard, timid in the face of danger, and ignorant of the great and varied exercises that are as needful to the strong body as letters to the informed mind, such books as this need no excuse for their publication.
Many will say: "the time for this sort of thing is
(xi)
