rmonious
physical development.

We ourselves own a set of heavy Indian-clubs, of middling Indian-clubs,
and of light Indian-clubs. We have iron dumb-bells and wooden
dumb-bells. We recollect with considerable satisfaction a veritable
bean-bag which did good service in the household until it unfortunately
sprung a-leak. In an amateur way we have tried both systems, and felt
the better for them. We have a dim remembrance of rowing sundry leagues,
and even of dabbling with the rod and line. We always look with friendly
eye upon the Harvard Gymnasium, whenever it looms up in actual or mental
vision. Never yet could we get by an honest game of cricket or base-ball
without losing some ten minutes in admiring contemplation. We bow with
deep respect to Dr. Windship and his heavy weights. We bow, if anything,
with a trifle more of cordiality to Dr. Lewis and his light weights.
They both have our good word. We think that they would have our example,
were it not for the fatal proclivity of solitary gymnastics to dulness.
If we have not risen to the high degrees in this noble order of muscular
Christians, we claim at least to be a humble craftsman and faithful
brother.

Speaking with all seriousness, we have no faith in mental activity
purchased at the expense of physical sloth. It is well to introduce into
the school, into the family, and into the neighborhood any movement
system which will exercise all the muscles of the body. But the educated
man is not any more likely to need this general physical development
than anybody else. Establish your gymnasium in any village, and the
farmer fresh from the plough, the mechanic from swinging the hammer or
driving the plane, will be just as sure to find new muscles that he
never dreamed of as the palest scholar of them all. And the diffusion of
knowledge and refinement, so far from promoting inactivity and banishing
recreations from life, directly feeds that craving for variety out of
which healthful changes come, and awakens that noble curiosity which at
fit seasons sends a man out to see how the wild-flower grows in the
woods, how the green buds open in the spring, how the foliage takes on
its painted autumn glory, which leads him to struggle through tangled
thickets or through pathless woods that he may behold the brook laughing
in cascade from rock to rock, or to breast the steep mountain that he
may behold from a higher outlook the wonders of the visible creation.
Other things bein