HOW TO GET STRONG
proportion or kind of exercise; and its increase, as the newly acquired strength justifies and invites it; is all that is required. Without that hardness and solidity which are essentially masculine; there still comes a firmness and plumpness of muscle to which the unused arm or back was a stranger. Instead of these being incompatible with beauty, they are directly accessory to it. "Elegance of form in the human figure," says Emerson, "marks some excellence of structure"; and again, "Any real increase of fitness to its end, in any fabric or organism, is an increase of beauty."
Look at the famous beauties of any age; and everything in the picture or statue points to this same firmness and symmetry of make; this freedom from either leanness or flabbiness. The Venuses and Junos, the Minervas, Niobes, and Helens of mythology; the Madonnas; the mediæval beauties; all alike have the well-developed and shapely arm and shoulder; the high chest; the vigorous body; and the firm and erect carriage. Were there a thin chest or a flat shoulder; a poor and feeble arm or a contracted waist; it would at once mar the picture, and bring down on it judgment anything but favorable. Put now on the canvas or in marble, not the strongest and most comely, neither the weakest and least-favored, of our American girls or women; but simply her who fairly represents the average; and, however well the face and expression might suffice, the imperfect physical development, and indifferent figure and carriage, would at once justly provoke unfavorable comment.
That the same vigorous exercise and training which brought forth womanly physical beauty in ancient days will bring it out now, there need be no manner of doubt. An apt case in point was mentioned in the New York Tribune. It said:
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