Athletic Sports (extract)

The Physical Proportions of the Typical Man not only incapacitates the individual for any great mental or physical effort, but also renders him liable to disease. What is true of athletics to-day was equally true of gymnastics some fifteen or twenty years ago. Many of our college and city gymnasia were in the hands of a class of experts and specialists,who selected the apparatus as a meansof exhibiting their strength and prowess rather than a means of physical culture and self-improvement. The weaker members, finding few forms of apparatus that were suited to their capacity, would stand idle, content with admiring the exploits of their more vig­ orous companions. In fact, a man was made to feel that the gymnasium was no place for him unless he at least could turn a backward somersault, do the giant's swing, or hang by his toes. It would be foreign to my purpose to carry this discussion any further at the pres­ ent time. My object has been merely to show that all sports, exercises, and pastimes, pursued as ends in themselves, are necessa­ rily limited to a very small class, and con­ stantly tend to degenerate. What, then, can be done to make physi­ cal exercise more attractive to the masses, and to relieve our popular sports of some 12