How to Get Strong and How to Stay SoBlaikie, William
Science
How to Get Strong and How to Stay So
Blaikie, William
Physical education and training
There is no calling of the unmarried woman where vigorous health and
strength--not great or herculean, but simply such as every well-built and
well-developed woman ought to have--would not be of great, almost
priceless value to her. The shop-girl, the factory operative, the clerk in
the store, the book-keeper, the seamstress, the milliner, the telegraph
operator, are all confined, for many hours a day, with exercise for but a
few of the muscles, and with the trunk held altogether too long in one
position, and that too often a contracted and unhealthy one. Actually
nothing is done to render the body lithe and supple, to develop the idle
muscles, to deepen the breathing and quicken the circulation--in short, to
tone up the whole system. No wonder such a day's work, and such a way of
living, leaves the body tired and exhausted. It would, before long, do the
same for the strongest man. No wonder that the walk to and from work is a
listless affair. No wonder that, later on, special or general weakness
develops, and the woman goes through life either weak and delicate, or
with not half the strength and vigor which might readily be hers.
And is it any better with the married woman? Take one of limited means.
Much of the work about her home which servants might do, could she
employ them, she bravely does herself, willing to make ten times this
sacrifice, if need be, for those dearest to her. Follow her throughout
the day, especially where there are children: there is an almost endless
round of duties, many of them not laborious, to be sure, or calling for
much muscular strength, but keeping the mind under a strain until they
are done, difficult to encompass because difficult to foresee. In the
aggregate they are almost numberless. A man can usually tell in the
morning most of what is in front of him for the day--indeed, can often
plan so as to say beforehand just what he will be at each hour. But not
so the housewife and mother of young children. She is constantly called
to perform little duties, both expected and unexpected, which cannot
fail to tell on a person not strong. A healthy child a year old will
often weigh twenty pounds; yet a woman otherwise weak will carry that
child on her left arm several times a day up one or more flights of
stairs, till you would think she would drop from exhaustion. Let
sickness come, and she will often seem almost tireless, so devotedly
will she keep the child in her arms. While children are, of course,
carried less when they begin to walk, many a child two, or even three
years old, is picked up by the mother, not a few times a day, even
though he weighs thirty or forty pounds instead of twenty. Now for this
mother to have handled a dumb-bell of that weight would have been
thought foolish and dangerous, for nothing about her suggested strength
equal to that performance. And yet the devotion of a weak mother to
her child is quite as great as that of a strong one. Is it any wonder
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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