Delaware gazette. [volume] (Delaware, Ohio) 1855-1886, 1859-06-24
OF ATHLETIC
EXER CTSE.

The gymnasium was quite as essential a por-
/ ton of Greek education as the school room
and the limbs of youths and even of grown men
were as vigorously trained in athletic exercises
as their brains in arithmatic, rhetoric or phi
losophy. 1t was a wise and sound policy
which led the aucients thus to value the bodily
health and vigor that are to be gained by good
physical training; and tie minds end frames
of men nowadays would be far healthier ana
their lives far happier if the same honor were
paid to skill and strength in physical exercises,
and if the whole population were as carefully
aided and encouraged in the pursuit of active
sports as were the citizens Of the Greek re-
publics. Our contemporaries have, indeed, far
more need of such physical education than The
ancients had. The work of ancient Days wss
generally agricultural; men seldom were called
upon to labor indoors, and the toll OF the far
mer, or the hardships of the sailor or soldier
served to develop the limbs and strengthen the
sinews of race among whom the Olympic VIC
tors were held in honor. But while h1en labor
in close workshops or ill-ventilated factories
and while children are brought up TO labor at
the loom from the age of or 10 years we are
almost utterly careless of the duty of provi-
ding them with proper means Of bodily exercise
and proper encouragement to use those means.
We build schools for the young; we patronize
mechanics institutes for the adult. We pro
vide books, stools and desks to furnish the
mind and accustom the body to sedentary hab-
its. But we are little sedulous to supply our
schools with Fairgrounds to furnish the
working classes with healthful and strengthen
ing recreations The higher classes are better
off. AS youths, the emulation of the magnifi
cent Fairgrounds of the great public schools
initiates them into the love of cricket and foot
ball, and the universities learn them to beat and
to ride. As men, they recreate themselves By
the fatiguing sports of the Scotch moors or by
the hearty exercise of the foxhunter
Yet too many of them, on leaving school,
spend their lives without exercise of any vigor-
GUS kind, and render themselves sickly and I'M
happy by the want of it. This mistake is a
terrible one Not only does it render the
existing generation inferior in strength and Wig
or to their hardy ancestors, but it impairs their
health and transmits weakness and suffering to
their offspring. Indeed, considering how men
now live, and remembering that women hardly
ever enjoy any healthful bodily training what
soever, it seems wonderful that the human race
does not deteriorate faster than it actually
seems to do in physical vigor and corporesl
health. The necessity of bodily education
ought to be, to any man of common sense and
ordinary amount Of physiological knowledge,
at least as apparent as that of moral and intel
lectual training. Indepently of the necessity
of bodily health for its own sake, no mind can
be healthy and happy without it. It was re
Gently said by quaint but se3sible divine
that it is very difficult for man with bed d-
gestion to be good Christian, and it is Ger
tainly far more difficult for him than for a man
well trained in physical excrtioti ard efjoyiug
sound health to be good citizen and useful
member Of society. IF these things were borne
in mind by the philaliithtopists 4F.,o are most
laudably anxious for the education of the clas-
ses least able to provide it for themselves, the
value of their benevolent labors would be more
than doubled. In the present state Of public
knowledge and opinion it seems TO us that more
useful is the man who opens gymnasium than
he who endows a college; more valuable he
who lays out playground than he who builds
a school.-Manctester Guardian: