WHAT A GYMNASIUM MIGHT BE AND DO
and takes care of the arms and chest; the hour's "constitutional" daily out-of—doors has an especial advantage, in that it insures at least that much out-of—door life and air. Dr. Mitchell says, "When exposure to out-of-door air is associated with a fair share of physical exertion, it is an immense safeguard against the ills of anxiety and too much brain-work. I presume that very few of our generals could have gone through with their terrible task if it had not been that they lived in the open air, and exercised freely. For these reasons I do not doubt that the effects of our great contest were far more severely felt by the Secretary of War and the late President (Lincoln) than by Grant or Sherman."
There need be little fear, then, that a right use of the gymnasium will overdo. No better safeguard against that could be had than a wise director, familiar with the capacities of his pupil, watching him daily, instilling sound principles, and giving him the very work he needs. Under such a tutor a young man who went to college, on receiving his degree, would, if his moral and mental duties were attended to,[1] be graduated, not with an educated mind alone, but an educated body as well; not with merely a bright head, and a body and legs like
- ↑ Of course it is folly to talk of building up the body of any boy or man who by any vices, secret or open, is sapping and undermining its very foundations, whether he knows it or not. For all such, no kinder thing could be done than to have them read Rev. Dr. Stahl's admirable little books, What Every Young Boy Ought to Know, and What Every Young Man Ought to Know. Next to brave Anthony Comstock, who has brought about in many of our States the enactment of a law making it a States-prison offence to show to any one an indecent book, paper, or picture, we do not know of any one who is doing as much good in this important field as this same high-minded editor of the Lutheran Herald, published by the Vir Publishing Co., Philadelphia.
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