WHAT A GYMANSIUM MIGHT BE AND DO
If he can already raise a heavy dumb-bell over his head with his right hand; he may, and often does, go on increasing his power in this single direction; but in years actually gains little or no size or strength in his other arm, his legs, or any other part of his body. No one stops him, or even gives him an idea of the folly of his course; indeed, no one has the power to do so. Often the place is kept by a man simply to make a living. This secured, his ambition dies. He may be a boxer or an acrobat; or even a fair general gymnast. With a few notable exceptions, we have yet to hear of an instance where the instructor has either devised a plan of class-exercise which has proved attractive; or, in a given time, has brought about a decided increase in size and strength to a majority of his pupils in a specific and needed direction.
College rowing and baseball, while often unquestionably benefiting those who took part in them, have been found to work detrimentally, but in a way, as will be shown in a moment, certainly not expected by the public. The colleges in this country which pay most attention to rowing are Cornell, Yale, Harvard, and Columbia. It is well known that in both Oxford and Cambridge universities the men who row are numbered by hundreds; that over twenty eight-oared crews alone, to say nothing of other classes, are sometimes on the river at once, and that the problem for the "'Varsity" captain is not, as here, to find eight men all fitted for places in the boat, but, out of many fit, to tell which to take. For years the American press has reported the performances of our student oarsmen even oftener and more fully than the English non-sporting papers those of their own oarsmen, so that they have filled a larger space in the public eye. Men naturally thought that
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