If the apparatus is only to be used by a man or boy, a striking-bag can be made of seven or eight pieces of soft calf-skin, so that the whole, when full of sawdust, shall be either round like a ball or pear-shaped, and shall be about fifteen inches in horizontal diameter. This should be hung on a rope from a hook screwed into one of the beams of the ceiling. This makes a valuable acquisition to the snug little home-gymnasium. For a person having a weak chest, and who aims to broaden and deepen that important region, perhaps no better and safer contrivance can be had than the one sketched in Fig. 8, on page 248. The fact of having a few bits of apparatus close at hand, when one is lightly clad, will tend to tempt any one to get at them a little while morning and evening. If a parent wants children to use them, instead of placing the apparatus in his own room, the nursery, or an empty room where all can have ready access, would be better. Of course, in such case there should be additional weights, and dumb-bells suited to the age and strength of those who are to use them.[E] Indeed, by providing children at home with articles which they like to use, and the use of which brings much direct good, the nursery has a new value--greater, perhaps, when made the most of, than it ever had before. All the exercises needed to make children strong can be readily learned, as all of them are exceedingly simple. In another place these exercises will be indicated. The parent can then select those exercises he sees the child needs, and teach them in a few minutes, so arranging it as to get the children to exercise a certain time every day. As has been shown, the cost of all these appliances will not be nearly as much as a moderate doctor's bill, and quite as little as the patent gymnastic articles, which are so often praised, mostly by people who know little or nothing of other forms of exercise than those fitted to their own apparatus. A large beam, for instance, has been devised, with handles fastened by a contrivance above it, which is meant to restore the spine (when out of place) to its proper position. But there is scarcely anything it can accomplish which cannot readily be done on some one of these simple, old-fashioned, and far less cumbrous pieces of apparatus.