The Somerset herald. [volume] (Somerset, Pa.) 1870-1936, 1884-08-27

Bodily exercises imply society
and a social disposition /; for ifa SOL
itary person, like Robinson Crusoe
or Enoeh Arden, were to be found
daily practicing with the bars and
rings, we should suspect him, not
of social, but of ominously selfish
and morbid tendencies. The pleas
ure of being strong lies in the fact
that others are strong around us
thereby furnishes us with compan-
ionship and competition which are
the fuel of life. Health is. or should
be, incidental to this pleasure that
is to say, | question the propriety
of making health the deliberate OBJ
iect Of exercise. Let it come if it
will but it will come none the
slower if you forbear to be on the
watch for it, To make yourself
strong for the sake of your private
health is the analogue of obeying the
decalogue for the sake of your pri-
vate crown there is something un-
pleasantly unsympathetic about it
But be strong simply because man
kind at large will be better if all men
become physically more efficient,
and the other blessings shall be ad-
ded to you. Moreover, apart from
the stimulus of example and fellow
ship, it is doubtful whether one man
in twenty will take the trouble reg
ularly to exert herself. Unless there
be some motive outside himself, he
will soon cease to think it worth
while. DR.. Winship used to say
that he never would have made him
self the man he was but for the
purpose he had formed to thrash a
certain offensive upper-class man in
college; and Mr.. William Blaikie
began his athletic career an appar-
emily hopeless consumptiye. DR..
Winship lifted three thousand |
pounds, and Mr.. Blaikie pulled |
stroke of the Harvard crew in their
great race with Yale; but it would |
be useless to tell me that the desire
to thrash a nsAa or to heal diseased |
lung had more than the minutest
share in bringing these results about.
If it had not been for the gymnasi-
um, with its jolly society OF Jealous
and emulous young gymnasts, Win
ship would never have lifted his
own weight, and Blaikie would have
been, at best, a valetudinarian.
The fame of the Olympic and 18TH
milan gaines still echoes in our ears
but it was not the games that made
Greece go to see them it was
Greece going to see them that made
the games. In the same way have
noticed that the university crews of
Oxford and Cambridge, for example
profess to be superbly Indifferent as
to whether the British public on
the day of the race lines the river
bank from Putney to Mortlake
they have lately undertaken
to intimate that they would prefer
to have the public keep away. But
no one knows better than they
themselves that, were the public
some day to take them at their
word not only would the crews ney-
er find the energy to get themselves
into condition, but were that difficult
ty overcome, they would never find
It in their hearts to pull further that
Hammersmith Bridge, near which
here is a very good ale-house. |
10 not wish, however, to run this
.heory into the ground Ionly wish
o indicate that athletics are essential
y a popular pursuit, conducive to
,cod citizenship, and the cultivation
If which, therefore, good citizenship
should imply.-Julian Hawthorne,
n Harpers Magazine for August.