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SPALDING'S ATHLETIC LIBRARY.
55

EXTRACTS FROM LETTERS OF PROMINENT PHYSICAL DIRECTORS


New Haven, Conn.

W. G. Anderson, Associate Director Yale University Gymnasium: "I believe in 'tumbling' as an exercise. It makes a man quick, agile, and very sure-footed. It is a form of sport that is popular and perfectly legitimate when properly taught. We have no good book on the subject, but need one. If such a work is to be presented to those interested in this subject, it ought to be written by a man who has had much experience in actual tumbling, who is familiar with the mechanism of the body, and who is educated. Dr. James T. Gwathmey, of Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tenn., is just the person to compile a book on this form of gymnastics. He is a clever performer, a teacher of wide experience, and an educated physician. I have looked over the MS. of the Doctor's new book, and I indorse it."


McGill University, Montreal, Canada.

R. Tait McKenzie, M.D. : "I am glad to find some one ready and able to draw the veil from a branch of gymnastics which the professional acrobat has so long kept shrouded in mystery. The reducing of the various feats of tumbling to a progressive sequence, and the analyzing of the various combinations, is indeed a difficult task; but your kinetoscope method of illustration will make clear what would otherwise require pages of description. Your work can not but assist any one of ordinary ability in mastering the rudiments of the art; but it will also appeal to the much wider field of all who