GREAT MEN'S BODIES
heavily, I noticed, like a man with more strength than elasticity, the result of age, I suppose (the president is over seventy), for the chief had told me that Krueger had been a famous athlete in his youth, and had been noted for speed of foot as well as for strength. Krueger himself, it appears, in exemplification of his belief in the superiority of the white over the black races even in physique, loves to tell of how he once ran against three Zulu runners; and beat the best of them by some ten miles in the twenty-four hours, which, for an untrained man, must be regarded as an extraordinary feat. Krueger stands now about five feet eight inches; in youth he was probably about five feet nine inches. His shoulders are very broad; his frame at once square and deep, his great size and length of body render him ungraceful, almost uncouth."
Another John L. Sullivan body (see page 207), big enough for a much taller man, under a great head; born great; and made greater by the only true developer of power—intelligent hard work!
And he seems to have been rather handy with his hands as well as with his feet. For Joseph Vande Heuvel, a purchasing agent, living in Bay City, Michigan, an old comrade in arms of Krueger, told the correspondent of the Boston Transcript this of the great Boer:
"'Oh, Krueger was a good man!' 'Good how?' I asked. 'Oh! every way; brave; kind; generous—everything! He'd give a friend his last kreutzer, or risk his life a hundred times over for him; but he was a terribly hard hater, too, and couldn't very easily forget an insult.'
"'Was he skilled in the use of arms?' 'You bet,' replied he; 'he was the best rifle and pistol shot and the
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