HOW TO GET STRONG
age run. But, had he been always used to running—not fast, but steady running—it would not seem so. Tom Brown of Rugby, in the hares-and-hounds game, of which he gives us so graphic an account, makes both the hares and hounds cover a distance of nine miles without being much the worse for it; and yet they were simply school-boys, of all ages from twelve to eighteen. We too have now and then hares and a pack of hounds; but not many.
Let him who thinks that the average American boy of the same age would have fared as well, go down to the public bath-house; and look at a hundred or two of them as they tumble about in the water. He will see more big heads and slim necks; more poor legs and skinny arms; and lanky, half-built bodies than he would have thought the town could produce. He need not see them stripped. One of our leading metropolitan journals, in an editorial headed, "Give the Boy a Chance," said:
"About one in ten of all the boys in the Union are living in New York and the large cities immediately adjacent; and there are even more within the limits of Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago, and the other American cities whose population exceeds a hundred thousand. The wits of these millions of boys are being forced to their extreme capacity, whether they are taught in the school, the shop, or the street. But what is being done for their bodies? The answer may be obtained by standing at the door of almost any public or private school or academy at the hour of dismissal. The inquirer will see a crowd of undersized, listless, thin-faced children, with scarcely any premise of manhood about them."
This was years ago. But is it not true to-day?
Take a tape-measure and get the girth of chest; upper and fore arm; of waist, hips, thighs, and calves of these little fellows; or of those of the school nearest your
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