ning-authorities at his college, or elsewhere, take him in hand
(naturally enough again) on the strength of outward appearances. And
whether they have been right or wrong in choosing him is more than they
can say, until the experiment has been tried, and the mischief has been,
in many cases, irretrievably done. How many of them are aware of the
important physiological truth, that the muscular power of a man is no
fair guarantee of his vital power? How many of them know that we all
have (as a great French writer puts it) two lives in us--the surface
life of the muscles, and the inner life of the heart, lungs, and brain?
Even if they did know this--even with medical men to help them--it would
be in the last degree doubtful, in most cases, whether any previous
examination would result in any reliable discovery of the vital fitness
of the man to undergo the stress of muscular exertion laid on him. Apply
to any of my brethren; and they will tell you, as the result of their
own professional observation, that I am, in no sense, overstating this
serious evil, or exaggerating the deplorable and dangerous consequences
to which it leads. I have a patient at this moment, who is a young man
of twenty, and who possesses one of the finest muscular developments
I ever saw in my life. If that young man had consulted me, before
he followed the example of the other young men about him, I can not
honestly say that I could have foreseen the results. As things are,
after going through a certain amount of muscular training, after
performing a certain number of muscular feats, he suddenly fainted one
day, to the astonishment of his family and friends. I was called in and
I have watched the case since. He will probably live, but he will never
recover. I am obliged to take precautions with this youth of twenty
which I should take with an old man of eighty. He is big enough and
muscular enough to sit to a painter as a model for Samson--and only last
week I saw him swoon away like a young girl, in his mother's arms."

"Name!" cried Geoffrey's admirers, still fighting the battle on their
side, in the absence of any encouragement from Geoffrey himself.

"I am not in the habit of mentioning my patients' names," replied the
surgeon. "But if you insist on my producing an example of a man broken
by athletic exercises, I can do it."

"Do it! Who is he?"

"You all know him perfectly well."

"Is he in the doctor's hands?"

"Not yet."

"Where is he?