WHAT A GYMNASIUM MIGHT BE AND DO
But though there are many skilled directors; at a great gymnasium, with hundreds and even thousands of students, the director alone cannot do the work. His is now no task of merely showing teacher and pupil lighter and simpler exercises for daily use, which can be done by all, right upon the school-floor. He has far more advanced work, nothing less than sizing up each man; and then patching him out, till he is well rounded; strong all over; easy of action; hearty and enduring. It is too much to ask the physical director to do all this alone. He should have a corps of efficient assistants, trained by himself, or other capable teacher; and in every way fit for the work; and fortunately these are easy to be had. The present way of raising most American students is for parents to put financial crutches under them; and, to keep them leaning upon these till they are one, or several, years past twenty-one. Self-reliance is the mother of power. Does this plan brood it? Is this the way to make strong men? Is it the way in which the strongest men our land has yet known were bred? Some of them, Yes. Most of them, No. Washington, the surveyor, at sixteen earning his doubloon a day from Lord Fairfax; Lincoln, rail-splitter and flat-boatman, supporting himself, and helping to support others before he was twenty-one; Franklin; Clay; Vanderbilt; Chase; Garfield; O'Conor; Edison, and a long and brilliant list of those whom we delight to honor—master-workmen in our country's progress. If, at all of our live, stronger colleges, it was the rule, of the parent, that a student must make either the first third of the class; or help to pay his way through college; it would be one of the kindest acts that could be done to him. There would not be half so much time loafed away, and wasted, in college, as there is now; discussing trifles; or the last football
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