HOW TO GET STRONG
TO DEVELOPE THE NECK
A slim neck is a sign of weakness. Mr. Froude in his life of Julius Cæsar speaks of Cicero as having a neck like a woman. But this was before, as one writer says, he "spent two years in Greek gymnasiums, and came back as vigorous as a farm-hand." You often see men with a grand head connected with a feeble body by a weak, unsatisfactory-looking neck, and wonder why so good a head accomplishes so little. Put such a neck and body under Webster's head, and his working power would have been so cut down that, after his earlier years, it is doubtful if he would have ever been heard of; for a feeble body could not long stand the demands of such a head. Under that head, 24 inches in its largest girth, look at that neck! And in Mr. Beecher's case, see what a mighty neck he had, a 17-inch collar even being tight for it after he had been preaching—"a neck clothed with thunder." Look at the splendid neck of the greatest prize-fighter America has yet produced—one of the greatest of modern times—John L. Sullivan. Corbett and Fitzsimmons have both yet to prove themselves great in one element essential to a prize-fighter. They can give pretty sharp blows;—they can avoid blows wonderfully;—but in which battle has either ever proved that he could take? Each is too small in the barrel to be a sure taker. But not so Sullivan. Dr. Sargent measured his chest below the breast muscles at 409⁄10 inches natural, and 437⁄10 inches inflated! Although there would have to be some deduction because he was rather fleshy, neither of the other two can show any such figures. Each is almost slender for his height, Fitzsimmons being finely developed in his striking muscles—but almost slim everywhere else. This is not the way
