es of rather grotesque movements
which supple and prepare the body for more muscular feats: these are
calisthenic exercises. Such are being at last introduced, thanks to Dr.
Lewis and others, into our common schools. At the word of command, as
swiftly as a conjuror twists his puzzle-paper, these living forms are
shifted from one odd resemblance to another, at which it is quite lawful
to laugh, especially if those laugh who win. A series of windmills,--a
group of inflated balloons,--a flock of geese all asleep on one leg,--a
circle of ballet-dancers, just poised to begin,--a band of patriots
just kneeling to take an oath upon their country's altar,--a senate of
tailors,--a file of soldiers,--a whole parish of Shaker worshippers,--a
Japanese embassy performing _Ko-tow_: these all in turn come like
shadows,--so depart. This complicated attitudinizing forms the
preliminary to the gymnastic hour. But now come and look at some of the
apparatus.

Here is a row of Indian clubs, or sceptres, as they are sometimes
called,--tapering down from giants of fifteen pounds to dwarfs of four.
Help yourself to a pair of dwarfs, at first; grasp one in each hand,
by the handle; swing one of them round your head quietly, dropping the
point behind as far as possible,--then the other,--and so swing them
alternately some twenty times. Now do the same back-handed, bending the
wrist outward, and carrying the club behind the head first. Now
swing them both together, crossing them in front, and then the same
back-handed; then the same without crossing, and this again backward,
which you will find much harder. Place them on the ground gently after
each set of processes. Now can you hold them out horizontally at arm's
length, forward and then sideways? Your arms quiver and quiver, and down
come the clubs thumping at last. Take them presently in a different and
more difficult manner, holding each club with the point erect instead of
hanging down; it tries your wrists, you will find, to manipulate them
so, yet all the most graceful exercises have this for a basis. Soon you
will gain the mastery of heavier implements than you begin with, and
will understand how yonder slight youth has learned to handle his two
heavy clubs in complex curves that seem to you inexplicable, tracing
in the air a device as swift and tangled as that woven by a swarm of
gossamer flies above a brook, in the sultry stillness of the summer
noon.

This row of masses of iron, laid