spect faded that night; but the few friends at
home to whom I had confided my plans had so pertinaciously assured me that
I--the most diffident man in the world--could never appear before an
audience without letting them see I was shaky in the knees, that I
resolved to do what I could to show my depreciators they were false
prophets.

And so I called on the manager,--with a beating heart, as you may suppose.
He was a small, quiet, gentlemanly person, whom I regret I cannot,
consistently with historical truth, show up as a Crummles. But not even
Dickens could have found any salient trait for ridicule in the man.
Frankly and kindly he went into the statistics of the theatrical business,
and showed me, that, unless I was rich, and could afford to play for my
own amusement, the stage held out few inducements; it was barren of
promise to a young man anxious to make himself independent of the world.

I did not reply, "Perish the lucre!" but said that I would be content, in
the early part of my career, to labor for reputation. He soon satisfied me
that he could not give up his stage to an experimentalist, and I did not
urge my suit; but bade Mr. S. good morning, and, a day or two afterwards,
started for Niagara. Here, wet by the mist and listening to the roar of
the great cataract, I speedily forgot my chagrin, and took a not
unfriendly leave of the illusions which had lured me on to try my fortune
on the stage. Even now they return occasionally with all their
fascination.

While at Rochester, as I was passing through the principal street, I met a
crowd assembled about a lifting-machine. On making trial of it, I found I
could lift four hundred and twenty pounds. I had then been for four years
a gymnast, and I supposed my practice would have qualified me to make the
crowd stare at my achievement. But the result was far from triumphant. I
found what many other gymnasts will find, that _main strength_, by which I
mean the strength of the truckman and the porter, cannot be acquired in
the ordinary exercises of the gymnasium.

Returning home, I began the study of anatomy and physiology, and in the
autumn of 1854 entered the Harvard Medical School. The question of the
extent to which human strength can be developed had long been invested
with a scientific interest to my mind. One of the greatest lifting feats
on authentic record is that of Thomas Topham, an Englishman, who in Bath
Street, Cold Bath Fields, London, on the 28th of