r (though this may sometimes prove an advantage as
well); another, in requiring apparatus, and at first a teacher. These
apart, perhaps no other form of exercise is so universally invigorating.
A teacher is required, less for the sake of stimulus than of precaution.
The tendency is almost always to dare too much; and there is also need
of a daily moderation in commencing exercises; for the wise pupil will
always prefer to supple his muscles by mild exercises and calisthenics,
before proceeding to harsher performances on the bars and ladders. With
this precaution, strains are easily avoided; even with this, the hand
will sometimes blister and the body ache, but perseverance will cure the
one and Russia Salve the other; and the invigorated life in every
limb will give a perpetual charm to those seemingly aimless leaps and
somersets. The feats once learned, a private gymnasium can easily be
constructed, of the simplest apparatus, and so daily used; though
nothing can wholly supply the stimulus afforded by a class in a public
institution, with a competent teacher. In summer, the whole thing can
partially be dispensed with; but we are really unable to imagine how any
person gets through the winter happily without a gymnasium.

For the favorite in-door exercise of dumb-bells we have little to say;
they are not an enlivening performance, nor do they task a variety of
muscles,--while they are apt to strain and fatigue them, if used with
energy. Far better, for a solitary exercise, is the Indian club, a
lineal descendant of that antique one in whose handle rare medicaments
were fabled to be concealed. The modern one is simply a rounded club,
weighing from four pounds upwards, according to the strength of the
pupil; grasping a pair of these by the handles, he learns a variety of
exercises, having always before him the feats of the marvellous Mr.
Harrison, whose praise is in the "Spirit of the Times," and whose
portrait adorns the back of Dr. Trall's Gymnastics. By the latest
bulletins, that gentleman measured forty-two and a half inches round the
chest, and employed clubs weighing no less than forty-seven pounds.

It may seem to our non-resistant friends to be going rather far, if we
should indulge our saints in taking boxing lessons; yet it is not long
since a New York clergyman saved his life in Broadway by the judicious
administration of a "cross-counter" or a "flying crook," and we have
not heard of his excommunication from t