on afterwards a delegation of Irishmen, rather startling from its
numbers, entered the yard. Among them was Mr. Farren. They surrounded my
lifting-apparatus, while I, unseen, surveyed them from a back window. I
saw Mr. Farren take the handle, straddle the hogshead, throw himself into
a lifting posture, and, straining every muscle to its utmost tension, give
a tremendous pull. But the weight made no sign; and his friends, thinking
he was merely feeling it, said, "Wait a bit,--Pat'll have it up the next
pull." Mr. Farren rested a moment,--then threw off his coat, rubbed his
hands, and, seizing the handle a second time, tugged away at it till his
muscles swelled and his frame quivered. But he failed in starting the
barrel, and a burst of laughter from his friends and backers announced his
defeat.

It is now but justice to Mr. Farren to say that it could hardly be
expected of him to lift such a weight at either the first trial or the
second. A want of confidence, or the maladjustment of the rope, might have
interfered with the full exercise of his strength. I need not say that his
discomfiture was witnessed by me from my hiding-place with the liveliest
satisfaction; for I had begun to pride myself on being able to outlift any
man in the country.

In May, 1856, I received the appointment of medical assistant to Dr.
Walker, at the Lunatic Hospital, South Boston, and gave up for a couple of
months my practice of lifting. The consequence was a rapid diminution of
strength, which suggested to me a return to the lifting exercise. Near the
hospital was a large unoccupied building, formerly the House of Industry.
In the cellar of this building I put a barrel, and loaded it with rocks
and gravel as I had done in Roxbury. Immediately overhead, on the first
floor, I cut a hole, about six inches square, and passed up a rope
attached to the barrel. This rope I looped at the end, for the reception
of a handle. On the floor I nailed two cleats between three and four feet
apart, as guards to keep my feet from slipping. Beginning with about six
hundred pounds, I added a few pounds daily, till I was able, in November,
1856, to lift with my hands alone nine hundred pounds.

Returning home the ensuing winter, I attended a second course of medical
lectures, and, in the routine of labors incident to a medical student's
life, omitted to develop further my powers as a lifter. In the summer of
1857 I became a practitioner of medicine. In the autum