The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, No. 58, August, 1862: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and PoliticsVarious
Science
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, No. 58, August, 1862: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics
Various
American periodicals
When Daniel Boone was living alone in Kentucky, his intellectual
exercises were doubtless of the quiet, slow, heavy character. Other
white men joined him. Under the social stimulus, his thinking became
more sprightly. Suppose that in time he had come to write vigorously,
and to speak in the most eloquent, brilliant manner, does any one
imagine that he would have lost in mental vigor by the process? Would
not the brain, which had only slow exercise in his isolated life,
become bold, brilliant, and dashing, by bold, brilliant, and dashing
efforts?
A farm-boy has slow, heavy muscles. He has been accustomed to heavy
exercises. He is transferred to the circus, and performs, after a few
years' training, a hundred beautiful, splendid feats. He at length
reaches the matchless Zampillacrostation of William Hanlon. Does any
one think that his body has lost power in this brilliant education?
Is it true, either in intellectual or physical training, that great
exertions, under proper conditions and limitations, exhaust the powers
of life? On the contrary, is it not true that we find in vigorous,
bold, dashing, brilliant efforts the only source of vigorous, bold,
dashing, and brilliant powers?
In this discussion I have not considered the treatment of
invalids. The principles presented are applicable to the training of
children and adults of average vitality.
I will rest upon the general statement, that all persons, of both
sexes, and of every age, who are possessed of average vitality,
should, in the department of physical education, employ light
apparatus, and execute a great variety of feats which require skill,
accuracy, courage, presence of mind, quickness of eye and hand,--in
brief, which demand a vigorous and complete exercise of all the powers
and faculties with which the Creator has endowed us; while deformed
and diseased persons should be treated in consonance with the
philosophy of the _Swedish Movement-Cure_, in which the movements
are slow and limited.
It is but justice to the following series of exercises with dumb-bells
to state that not only are they, with two or three exceptions, the
writer's own invention, but the wisdom of the precise arrangement
given, as well as the balance of exercise in all the muscles of the
body and limbs, has been well proved by an extensive use during
several years.
By way of illustrating the new system of dumb-bell exercises, I
subjoin a few cuts. The entire series contains more than fifty
exercises.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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