But, while this is all well enough for young girls, is it not too late for full-grown women to attempt to get the same benefits? The girl was young and plastic, and, with proper care, could be moulded in almost any way; but the woman already has her make and set, and these cannot readily be changed. Perhaps not quite so readily, but actual trial will show that the difficulty is largely imaginary. To many, indeed to most women, the idea is absolutely new, and they never supposed such change possible. Bryant, beginning at forty, made exercise pay wonderfully. Bear in mind how, with a few minutes a day, Maclaren enlarged and strengthened men thirty years old; that, out of his class of over a hundred, the greatest gain was in the oldest man in it, and he was thirty-five. Let us look at what one or two women have managed to effect by systematic and thorough bodily training. In "The Coming Man" Charles Reade says (p. 50), "Nathalie, a French gymnast, and not a woman of extraordinary build, can take two fifty-six-pound weights from the ground, one in each hand, and put them slowly above her head." She has "a sister who goes up the slack-rope. Farini saw her pitted against twenty sailors. The sailors had a slack-rope; she had another. A sailor went up as far as he could; the gymnast went as high on her rope at the same time. Sailor came down tired, the lady fresh. Another sailor went up, the lady ditto; and so on. _She wore out the whole twenty, having gone up an aggregate of feet higher than St. Peter's Church at Rome._ This feat is due to great strength, complete either-handedness, and the athlete's power of pinching a rope with the sinews of the lower limbs." But is this great and unusual strength, especially of the arms, desirable in most women? Not at all; but that is not the point. When Farini says that the first step toward making one a skilled gymnast or acrobat is to bring up the weak arm, and shoulder, and side--usually the left--until equally strong with its, till now, superior mate, and that he is constantly doing that, he is doing more by far than would be needed to make most women, not as strong as acrobats and performers, but--a far more important matter--reasonably and comfortably so, sufficiently to keep nervous disorders away, to enable them to be far better equal to the daily duties, and to spend life with an appreciation and zest too often unknown by the weak woman; finally, to preserve for a woman the bloom and healthy look which once in a while she sees, even in a woman of advanced years, and which would be her own did she use the means to have it.