HOW TO GET STRONG
gun-carriage";—you have all the tools with which to educate yours into a good body now ready at hand. Of the five events in the mighty games of ancient Greece—throwing the discus; and the javelin; leaping, running, and wrestling—you have the more important three—the leaping, running, and wrestling. We Americans are generally poor wrestlers; and weak in many parts, where in a few months of half an hours work each evening we could soon become strong. Turn us into a nation of wrestlers, and that mighty increment of vigor would be of incalculable value in our health, effectiveness, comfort, working-power, and self-reliance—not as individuals only, but as a nation. Of two regiments otherwise in all ways alike, but one all wrestlers; the other ignorant of the art; the wrestlers would be liable to win every battle.
And the women in the shop and store and mill should have most of the exercises just as well as the men; care being had to choose those that suit them best. It will not be long till you will find girls there who can out-skate the men, out-swim them, out-row them, and pass them in many another line, as the Spartans found that their maidens often did pass their men when trained, not for health, but for war.
Marked as we think our interest in this country is in athletics, it has scarcely more than begun. Indeed, we are not ready yet for high performance in this field.
As already seen in rowing, so in all other athletic lines, we have no really national meet or track. Will some one name a track in or near a great city where the best men of the year from the whole nation, now meet and prove their superiority? Mention some track where fifty thousand persons even can be comfortably seated and sheltered, so as to view the games. Thirty, forty thou-
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