The daily morning journal and courier., 1895-01-16
Outings and Innings.

tFrom Harper's Young People.l If any part of your body is weak; if
 your lungs tend to consumption, or
 your chest is so narrow that your fam
 fly physician tells you to live out-of-
 doors and exercise; or even if your chest is narrow and nobody has the sense or forethopght to tell you to go
 out and exercise-if any of these sup
 positions of mine are true, you need
 some one to tell you how to exercise to
 correct that natural or cultivated phys
 ical weakness. If you are weak in any
 one part of your body go to a gymna-
 sium instructor, and he will lay out a
 regular course of exercise for you and
 unless you are very far gone in any one
 spot, this exercise will do you a world
 of good. For particular parts of the
 body, therefore, a gymnasium is the
 proper thing; for general exercise take
 every chance you can find and then, if
 all fail, go to a gymnasium
 Now as to the exercise and winter
 exercise at that, of a young man of six
 teen. There is nothing better than the
 time-honored sport I am going to de-
 scribe, yet a sport that is so abused
 that most of us do not know it in it's true form.
 You have been training for the event for at least month. Remember that no one should really go into the sport that is, into a contest-until he has trained at least one month. You have fpnfnpa in thie to in ba of noon, after school or business or other hours of employment, you began, month ago, by running out across the snow, across the fields, over and under fences, for ten minutes That is to say, you ran "out" five minutes, and came back in five. You did this slowly, a gentle jog, and you were dressed as fol- lows: Sneakers" thick Scotch stock ings, a. light pair of short trousers with out any cramping arrangement at the knees, and what is called sweater at college over the upper part of your body. You don't need a hat. For a day or two you went only ten minutes, never stopping moment until you got inside the house again.
 Then you gradually increased the until you were out a whole hour. You went each and every day, l unless of course you were i'll, and each day you ran a steady jog, going faster | of course as you get into better train ing towards the end of the month. But always just as you came in sight of | your home, say two hundred yards | away, you sprinted each night as hard | as you could. Now the day of the con- test has come. During the night the | judges have marked out a course with | flags on sticks. It is five miles long, | and it winds around across the coun- try. Here is a big marsh to wallow | through. There is a fifteen-foot jump | across a bank to make. Here again is ! long hill to climb, and there a thick | bit of timber to work your way | through. Finally, there is a straight | pit of road half a mile long, and then he finish. Ten, twenty, thirty of you start, and the one who comes in first wins. This is "cross-country-r racing" )ne of the best winter or summer sports n the world for boys of seventeen or ,ighteen or over, but not for younger loys, for the strain is too great for hem. Of the actual racing, winning is and is something to work or, but the training that lwhole month s the real thing.