Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1878-04-22
MisfellaneoMs.
PARTIAL MUSCULAR DEVELOPMENT.

Any careful observer, passing along
our buster thoroughiares. or happening
into any country town on market day, or
any where else where men congregate,
can hardly have failed to notice that
while there are many strong ones and
many hearty ones, there are very few
who are either thoroughly erect or WELL
proportioned throughout. And when it
Is remembered that the large majority of
men in this country are sons of farmers,
merchants, mechanics, or laborers, ii is
not difficult to account for this One-sided.
ness of build and Indifferent carriage
For, while the farmers work is vigorous
and in the open air, far the greater part
of it, and especially the harder part Of it,
constantly uses his back, and does but lit
tie for his front, and particularly for the
front of his chest. Moving stoops him
over and rounds his back 80 do spading,
and hoeing, and wedding, and lifting of
nearly every sort. His back grows thick
and strong, perhaps massive; so do some
of the muscles of his arms, of his abdo-
men. and Of legs, until they soon so out
strip the others that his spine, getting
once crooked from being so long and SO
firmly held in one position, never gets
out of it day or night. While his whole
work strengthens, 1t also stifiens him.
lie is seldom good walker, the habit Of
always hitching up, though the errand is
to place hardly a mile away, contrib
uting to this stiffness, iosnd, as it usually
is. with an inerect position as he rides.
so unlike, by-the-way, that which is so
common among the English stage-driv-
ers, who elected praise from Emerson for
their dignihed, grandfatherly air.
Few of the mechanic arts are any
more favorable to symmetrical develop
ment and uprighiness of carriage. The
blacksmith, like the farmer, works some
muscles tremendously those of his hands,
of one of his shoulders. and of one of
his armS. for instance; but his legs are
often Indifferent, and his loins nothing
great, while, in common with hosts OF
mechanics, his work is not done in the
open air. Painters and plasterers have
good wrists; carpenters plane and saw
and drive nails well with their right
hands; masons, with backs bent, lift
heavy stones. which. with one OF their
hands they have chselled into shape for
their purpose; shoe-makers hoop their
backs rather more suscessfull than any
other trade; and the jewellers, compos-
itors, designers, and all who do the finer,
lighter work. would never, merely BIZ
their daily toll, develop into well-built,
erect men if they kept at it for a thous-
and Years. Men in mercantile life sit or
stand many hours each day, are frequent
" burdened with important and trying
| work, have so many irons in the fire MS
| to get no rest. and at the end OF the day
find themselves thoroughly exhausted.
| and in humor Tor any thing but vigorous
muscular eXertion If their work calls
them out much, it uses their legs only,
leaving the arms idle, and so keeping the
development but partial. The spade, the
pick, and the bar of the laboring-man
keep him stopped over in spite of all he
can do. and he lives and dies. as Charles
Reade described him in his admirable
sketch of the brave blind swimmer of
the Scottish firth, James Lambert-a man
| with a slouch in his gait.-WM. BLAKE,
in Harper's Magazine for May.