CHAPTER VIII.

WHAT A GYMNASIUM MIGHT BE AND DO.

Few colleges of any pretension have not some sort of a gymnasium--indeed, hold it out to parents as one of the attractions. There is a building, and it has apparatus in it. The former often costs twice as much as needs be; the latter may be well made, and well suited to its purpose, or may not--in fact, more frequently is not. Instead of having apparatus graded, so as to have some for the slim and weak, some for the stout and broad, too often one pair of parallel bars or one size of rowing-weight must suffice for all. Frequently the apparatus getting loose, or worn, or out of repair, remains so. The director is little more than a janitor, and is so regarded. In many instances he does so little as to render this opinion a just one. Imperfect ventilation, and in winter lack of proper warmth, help to make it unattractive. The newly-arrived Freshman is generally run down and thin from overwork in preparing himself for college. Many a time, when much work was telling on him, he consoled himself with the thought that in the college-gymnasium, with his fellow-students about him all eagerly at work, he would soon pick up the strength he had lost, and perhaps come to be, in time, as strong as this or that fellow, a few years his senior, the fame of whose athletic exploits was more than local.

As a rule, the American student is not very strong on entering college. President Eliot, of Harvard, said, a few years ago, of a majority of those coming into that university, for instance, that they had "undeveloped muscles, a bad carriage, and an impaired digestion, without skill in out-of-door games, and unable to ride, row, swim, or shoot."

The student is usually inerect, and really needs "setting up" quite as much as the newly-arrived "pleb" at West Point. But does he get it? No. If coming from good stock, stronger than the average, and it happens to be a year when there is much interest in athletics, the rowing-men or the base-ball or foot-ball fellows will be after him. If they capture him, he will get plenty of work--more than enough--but in one single rut. If he knows something of the allurements of these sports, and desires to steer clear of them and be a reading man, still not to neglect his body, he is at a loss how to go to work. He finds a house full of apparatus, and does not know how to use it. He sees the boating and ball men hard at it, but on their hobbies, and looks about for something else to do. He finds no other class of fellows working with any vim, save those eager to show well as gymnasts. He falls in with these, takes nearly as much work the first day as they do, which is ten times too much for him, quite out of condition as he is. He becomes sore all over for two or three days, has no special ambition, after all, to be a gymnast, and, ten to one, throws up the whole business disgusted.

In the warmer months even the oarsmen and ball-players work out-of-doors, and, except a little brush by the new-comers during the first month or so, he finds the place deserted. At the start there was nobody to receive him, place him, and to encourage and invite him on. If naturally persistent, and he sticks to it awhile, he gropes about in a desultory way, now trying this and now that, until, neither increasing in size nor strength so fast as he had expected, he prefers to spend his spare hours in more attractive fields, and so drops the gymnasium, as many have done before him.

He has no more given it a fair trial than he would have his chemistry had he treated it in the same way. It is not his fault, for he knew no better. The whole method of bringing up most American boys does almost nothing to fit the average boy for even the simpler work of the gymnasium, let alone its more advanced steps. Often, in the university gymnasium, you will see fellows actually so weak in the arms that they can hardly get up in the parallel bars and rest their weight on their hands alone, much less go through them clear to the other end. It is a pretty suggestive commentary on the way these establishments are conducted that the men so lamentably deficient are by no means all from the new-comers, but often those who have nearly completed their course.

Yet here is a school which, rightly used, would do the average student more good, and would fit him better for his life's duties, than any other one branch in the whole curriculum.

But a few years since a son of a lawyer of national reputation, a highly gifted youth, made a most brilliant record at one of our best known colleges. All who knew him conceded him a distinguished future; and yet he was hardly well out of college when he took away his life. Had there been a reasonable, sensible allowance of daily muscular work, had the overtaxed brain been let rest awhile, and vigor cultivated in other directions, the rank, the general average, might have been a trifle lower, but a most efficient man saved for a long and honorable life. And yet every college has men who are practically following this one's plan, overworking their brains, cutting off both ends of the night, forcing their mental pace, till even the casual observer sees that they cannot stand it long, and must break down before their real life's race is well begun. Now, however exceptional may be the talents such a man has, does not his course show either dense ignorance of how to take care of himself, or a lack of something which would be worth far more than brilliant talents--namely, common-sense?

Ought there not to be some department in a college designed to bring round mental development, where the authorities would step in and prevent this suicidal course? Oh, but there are such and such lectures on health. Yes, and in most instances you might as well try and teach a boy to write by merely talking to him, taking care all the time that he have no pen or pencil in his hand. It is a matter of surprise that college faculties are not more alive to the defects of the gymnasium conducted right under their very eyes. In every other branch they require a definite and specific progress during a given time, an ability to pass successfully periodical examinations which shall show that progress, and, if the pupil fails, it tells on his general standing, and is an element which determines whether he is to remain in college.

But in the gymnasium there is nothing of the sort, and in many cases the young man need not step into it once during the four years unless he likes. This state of things is partly accounted for by the fact that too many of the professors in our colleges do not know anything about a gymnasium, and what it can do for a man. Indeed, often, if from practical experience they were better up in this knowledge, it would beneficially affect the reputation of their college as a live institution.

Nor is the director, with very few exceptions, the right sort of man for his place. Either the faculty have no conception what they do need here, or they effectually drive off the man they ought to have by starving him. Professors' salaries are generally small enough, but the director of the gymnasium seldom gets half so much as the poorest paid of his brother professors. Indeed, the latter do not regard him as an equal at all, and until they do so with good reason, there is little prospect of improvement in this direction. A doctor as ill up to his work as the average college gymnasium director would soon be without a patient.

Nor are the gymnasiums of our cities and towns much better off. New York city to-day, with one or two exceptions, is utterly without a gymnasium worthy of her. Two of the best known are situated, one far below the street level, the other directly over a stable, and formerly at least, if not still, a very redolent stable at that. There is generally plenty of apparatus, most of which is good enough; but the boy or man who comes to use it finds at once the same things wanting as does the student in the college gymnasium. If he can already raise a heavy dumb-bell over his head with his right hand, he may, and often does, go on increasing his power in this single direction, but in years actually gains little or no size or strength in his other arm, his legs, or any other part of his body. No one stops him, or even gives him an idea of the folly of his course; indeed, no one has the power to do so. Ordinarily the place is kept by a man simply to make a living. This secured, his ambition dies. He may be a boxer or an acrobat, or even a fair general gymnast. With one or two exceptions, we have yet to hear of an instance where the instructor has either devised a plan of class exercise which has proved attractive, or in a given time has brought about a decided increase in size and strength to a majority of his pupils in a specific and needed direction.

College rowing and base-ball, while often unquestionably benefiting those who took part in them, have been found to work detrimentally, but in a way, as will be shown in a moment, certainly not expected by the public. The colleges in this country which pay most attention to rowing are Harvard, Yale, Cornell, and Columbia. It is well known that in both Oxford and Cambridge universities the men who row are numbered by hundreds; that over twenty eight-oared crews alone, to say nothing of other classes, are sometimes on the river at once, and that the problem for the "'Varsity" captain is not, as here, to find eight men all fitted for places in the boat, but, out of many fit, to tell which to take. For years the American press has reported the performances of our student oarsmen even oftener and more fully than the English non-sporting papers those of their own oarsmen, so that they have filled a larger space in the public eye. Men naturally thought that the interest among the students themselves was well-nigh universal, and many fathers expressed misgivings about sending sons to institutions where the regular curriculum seemed a secondary matter, and performance in athletic contests the chief thing.

Yet, strange as it may seem, this whole idea is an egregious mistake. Most of the students do take some interest in these contests, but it goes no farther than talking somewhat about them, and viewing them when they come off, and perhaps betting the amount of their term-bills on them. The number who actually take part, either in the racing or the ball matches, or in trying for a chance in them, is ridiculously small. Dr. Sargent says that at Yale College, where he has been for six years instructor in physical culture, they actually do not exceed three per cent. of the whole number of students, while five per cent. will include every man in college who takes active work at the gymnasium, on the river, or the ball-field! Any one familiar with American college athletics knows that the proportion of students who either play ball or row is probably, taking year and year together, about as great at Yale as anywhere in the country.

Surprising as these figures are, they prove conclusively that the present system of college athletics, so far as it assumes to benefit the students at large, or even a tithe of them, is an utter failure. Here, then, instead of the supposed advance in the general physical culture over that of years ago, there has been almost no advance. There are a few men who devote much time and attention to severe athletics, more than there is any need of, and become skilled and famous at them, but the great majority do little or nothing. Better ideas they doubtless have of what is and what is not creditable performance among the athletes, and also as to the progress that can be made in muscular development by direct and steady work. But that progress and that work they have no share in.

The very natural result follows, that the great majority of students, at graduation, average no better in size, strength, health, vigor, endurance, or stamina than those of a generation ago, or are any fitter to stand successfully the wear and tear of their life's work. Indeed, it is very doubtful if they are physically as well fitted for what is before them as the previous generation were, for in the latter case probably more came from farms and homes where much manual labor was necessary, while now a greater fraction are from the cities, or are the sons of parents whose occupation is mainly sedentary. Yet in that day gymnasiums at the colleges were almost unknown, while now they are general.

Does the gymnasium, then, pay? Yes, like a bath-tub--if used, and used sensibly; but if not, not. Then, as it is used so little, is it worth having?

At Harvard, for instance, to-day there is in process of erection, at great expense, a gymnasium which, when finished, will doubtless be the most costly building of the sort in this country, and very possibly the best appointed as well. But unless there is introduced some sensible and vigorous system of bringing the students regularly there, and working them while they are there, it will almost surely prove a failure, and accomplish little or no more good than did the old one. Now, suppose, first that this new institution is to be carried on with no more vigor or good sense than its predecessors. Next, suppose that, opposite this expensive affair, on some neighboring field, there were built a commodious shed, costing perhaps one-tenth as much as its more pretentious rival, strongly framed, weather-tight, sensibly arranged, well lit, and comfortably warmed, large enough, too, to admit, at the edge of the main room, of a running track of say twenty laps to the mile. In an L adjoining let there be ample and well-ventilated dressing-rooms, a locker for each student, and sufficient washing facilities to meet the demand. Suppose the ordinary sorts of apparatus were there, but made with great care, and of the proportions skilled gymnasts have found most suitable. Let there be, besides, all newly-invented appliances which have proved valuable, such as the twenty or more Dr. Sargent has introduced, and any other good ones as well. Suppose, too, that heavy weights for lifting, and all heavy clubs and dumb-bells, were carefully excluded.

On the walls there should be casts and drawings, showing well-proportioned and well-developed arms, legs, and trunks, and a brief statement with each of the various measurements and proportions, and the ages of the men from whom they were taken, and, if possible, the sort and amount of work done by each in their progress. These need by no means be all modern. Greece and Rome, Troy and Pompeii, could furnish their quota.

Suppose the director at once, on the joining of a pupil, recorded, on a page set apart specially in his register, the age, height, general physical characteristics, weight, girth of calf, thigh, hips, waist, lower chest, upper chest--both at rest and inflated--neck, upper arm--extended and drawn up--and the forearm, hand, and wrist, taking care to note the time of day the measurements were made, and also obtaining a photograph of the man as he then appeared in exercising costume. Suppose that, outside of the ordinary requirements as to method, decorum, order of using apparatus, and so on, the director refused to take any pupil who would not expressly agree to two things: first, to be at the gymnasium, stripped and ready for work, exactly at such a moment, four days out of the seven; second, to obey implicitly the director's orders, both as to what work he should do, and what omit.

Suppose the director's training had been such that he could tell at once, both from the looks and measurements of the man, where he was physically lacking, and that he so arranged his classes that all whose left hands were weaker than their right had left-handed work only until they were equalized up; that weak thighs, calves, abdominal muscles, chests, and backs had special work given them, bringing the desired parts directly into play, lightly as each needed at first, and then gradually working upward, the stronger parts, meanwhile, being at rest. Suppose this were continued until, at the end of the year, or often long before it, it is found that one arm is now as strong as the other, that the gain in girth at almost every measurement is nearly or all of an inch, and at some even two or more inches.

Suppose a series of exercises, aimed directly to enlarge and strengthen the respiratory power, were given to all, and every one, also, had a few minutes each day of "setting up," and other work aimed not so much to add size and strength as to make the crooked straight, to point out and insist on a proper carriage of the head, the neck, the shoulders, the arms, the whole trunk, and the knees, and to show each pupil what length of step best suited him, and which he ought to take.

Suppose that the director showed at once that he not only knew what to do all through, but how to do it, and so promptly won the confidence of those he sought to instruct and benefit.

Is there any question in which of these two institutions the young man would make the most desirable progress? The first building and apparatus might be grand, fitted up with nearly all that could be desired, but the gymnasium lacked a masterhead who should show its possibilities. Gymnasium and apparatus were like an engine without steam. The second building was not of much account as a building, but quite all that was needed for the real end in view. The London Rowing-club boat-houses were for a long time mere sheds, not to be named in the same day with the tasteful stone boat-houses along the Schuylkill, for instance; but those same plain sheds have for many years turned out amateur oarsmen who could row down any in the world.

And what a benefit a gymnasium conducted on some plan similar to that above suggested would be to any college or university! And yet almost any college, even of limited means, could afford it. Change the plan a little, and make the attendance by all students just as it is in other branches--just as it is at West Point in horseback practice--compulsory. Give the director a salary adequate to secure a first-class man in his calling--not merely an accomplished gymnast, acrobat, boxer, or fencer, but an educated physician, the peer of any of his brother-members of the faculty, fond of his calling, fond of the field before him, thoroughly acquainted with the plainer kinds of gymnastics and of acrobatic work, and a good boxer, an instructor especially quick in detecting the physical defects in his pupil, in knowing what exercise will cure them, zealous in interesting him, in encouraging him on, what incalculable good he could do! Every student in that college would practically have to be made over. Long before the four years, or even one of them, were through, that instructor would have made all the men erect (as is daily being done with the West Pointer). But his pupils, instead of being like the latter, developed simply in those muscles which his business called into play, would each be well developed all over, would each be up to what a well-built man of his years and size ought to be in the way of strength, and skill, and staying powers, and--a most important thing--would know what he could do, and what he could not; and so would not, as is now every day the case with many, attempt physical efforts long before he was fitted for them.

If he wanted to go into racing, the director would be his best friend, and would point out to him that the only safe way to get one's heart and lungs used to the violent action which they must undergo in racing, especially after the racer gets tired, would be by gradually increasing his speed from slow up to the desired pace, instead of, as too often happens, getting up to racing pace before he is half fit for it.

But he would also show him how one-sided it would make him, developing some parts, and letting others remain idle and fall behind in development, and--more important still--how brief and ephemeral was the fame which he was working for, and the risks of overdoing which it entailed.

Let one college in this land graduate each year a class of which every man has an erect carriage and mien, has the legs and arms, the back and chest, not of a Hercules, not of a prize racer or fighter, but of a hale, comely, strong, and well-proportioned man, and see how well it would pay. Bear in mind that an hour a day put in in the right way and at the right work will effect all this in far less time than four years of trying. The hardest-reading man can readily spare the time for it, especially if he must. What! would it take him from the thin, cadaverous fellow he too often is, and do all that for him? Beyond all doubt it would. Such vigorous work would soon sharpen his appetite, and he would find that, eat all he liked, he could digest it promptly, and would feel all the better for his generous living. The generous living has fed muscles now vigorously used; they have been enlarged and strengthened: the legs, which never used to try to jump a cubit high, even, once in the whole year, now carry their owner safely over a four-rail fence, and perhaps another rail, or even two of them. The lungs, which were scarcely half expanded, now have every air-cell thoroughly filled for at least one entire hour daily--an excellent thing for weak lungs. Correct positions of standing, sitting, walking, and running being now well known and understood, the lungs get more air into them than formerly, even when their owner is at rest. Another effect of it all is shown in a decidedly more vigorous circulation, and the consequent exhilaration and buoyancy of spirits, no matter whether the work in hand is mental or physical.

But will not this hour's work dull him mentally? It may be proper to digress for a moment and see if it will. Of men who have done just this kind and amount of work, this work aimed at every part of the body, we find no record, simply because, as we have already shown, considerable as the increased interest is in physical culture and development, this plan of reaching all the parts and being just to all, has scarcely been tried. But abundant proof that some physical exercise will not dull the man, but even brighten him, can be had without difficulty. A moment's reflection will show that a mind ever on the stretch must, like a bow so kept, be the worse for it, and that the strain must be occasionally slacked. There are two ways of slacking it. Both the physician and experience tell us that nothing rests a tired brain like sensible, physical exercise, except, of course, sleep.

"When in active use," says Mitchell, "the thinking organs become full of blood, and, as Dr. Lombard has shown, rise in temperature, while the feet and hands become cold. Nature meant that for their work they should be, in the first place, supplied with food; next, that they should have certain intervals of rest to rid themselves of the excess of blood accumulated during their periods of activity; and this is to be done by sleep, and also by bringing into play the physical machinery of the body, such as the muscles--that is to say, by exercise which flushes the parts engaged in it, and so depletes the brain."[H]

Here, then, some physical exercise will rest his brain, and fit it for more and better work. But this does not necessarily imply so much as is called for in the hour. Happily, however, there is no lack of instances where work, quite as vigorous, though not as well directed, has accompanied mental work of a very high order, and to all appearances has been a help rather than a hinderance. Instead of one hour a day, Napoleon for years was in the saddle several hours almost daily, but we never heard that it clogged his mind. Charles O'Conor, always fond of long walks, is good at them to-day, and noticeably erect and quick of movement, though for weeks he once lay at death's door, and though he was born in 1804. James Russell Lowell, sturdy, broad, and ruddy, is said to never ride when he can walk, and he is nearly sixty. Gladstone's reputation as an axeman among the Hawarden oaks has reached our shores. Indeed, it is doubtful if there are many better _fellers_ of his age in Europe, and he was born in 1809. Mr. M.H. Beebee, the present senior tutor at Cambridge University in England, who rowed at number two in the "'Varsity" eight against Oxford in '65, not only took the very highest university honor--a double-first--but a much higher double-first than even Gladstone had taken years before. The fencing, duelling, and hard riding of Bismarck's youth do not seem to have perceptibly dimmed his intellect, or to have unfitted it for enormous and very important work in later life.

And while the in-door work equalizes the strength, and takes care of the arms and chest, the hour's "constitutional" daily out-of-doors has an especial advantage, in that it insures at least that much out-of-door life and air. Dr. Mitchell says, "When exposure to out-of-door air is associated with a fair share of physical exertion, it is an immense safeguard against the ills of anxiety and too much brain-work. I presume that very few of our generals could have gone through with their terrible task if it had not been that they lived in the open air and exercised freely. For these reasons I do not doubt that the effects of our great contest were far more severely felt by the Secretary of War and the late President than by Grant or Sherman."

A recent, interesting, and wonderfully apt instance, more so than any of these, one going straight to the point, and as nearly as possible the equivalent of what we propose to urge later on all sedentary men, one where the proof comes directly from the gentleman's own pen, is that of the late Mr. Bryant, whose letter on the subject, written to a friend in 1871, will be found on page 169. With characteristic sturdiness, with no one to aid or guide him, he hit on a plan of work to be done, partly in his little home-gymnasium, and partly on the road, and stuck faithfully to it till well over fourscore, and at eighty-two he told the writer that he continued his exercise simply because it paid. His aim was to keep all his machinery in working order, and to prolong his life; and when he did die, at eighty-four, it was not from old age, not because his functions were worn out. With his usual vigor and energy when any writing was to be done, he had thrown himself into his work of preparing his address at the Mazzini celebration, till, tired and exhausted, the undue exposure to the hot sun and the resulting fall were too much for him, and these were what took him away.

But the plan here suggested will not only cover all he did, but more. Bryant does not seem to have cared for erectness, nor for a harmonious development of all the muscles. But had the amount of work he took been so directed, he might in youth have attained that harmony, and maintained it through life, as Vanderbilt maintained his erectness.

There need be little fear, then, that a right use of the gymnasium will overdo. No better safeguard against that could be had than a wise director, familiar with the capacities of his pupil, watching him daily, instilling sound principles, and giving him the very work he needs. Under such a tutor a young man who went to college, on receiving his degree, would, if his moral and mental duties were attended to, be graduated, not with an educated mind alone, but an educated body as well; not with merely a bright head, and a body and legs like a pair of tongs. If the history of brave, independent, earnest, pure men goes for anything, it will be found that as the body was healthy and strong, it has in many a pass in life directly aided moral culture and strength, and has kept the man from defiling that body which was meant to be kept sacred.

FOOTNOTES:

[H] "Wear and Tear," p. 54.