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Updated: June 6, 2025
But the gymnast is not my favourite; he has little or no tincture of the artist in his composition; his soul is small and pedestrian, for the most part, since his profession makes no call upon it, and does not accustom him to high ideas. But if a man is only so much of an actor that he can stumble through a farce, he is made free of a new order of thoughts.
The one may work as hard and be as strong as the other, and yet we cannot call him as healthy. Nothing short of Nature's own sweet air will supply the highest physical needs of the human frame. As our gymnasia are usually private, and only moderately frequented, the gymnast is not stimulated to those exertions which society and competition would arouse. Ennui often mars his enjoyment.
His suppleness and skill are unequaled. He lacks the muscle for a good gymnast, and at the parallel bars, or the fixed bar, he is the despair of his instructors. How will he supply this deficiency? Simply by the power of his will. All physical games do not require physical strength, and he became an excellent shot and fencer.
Wishing to put gymnastics in harmony with Nature, he studied anatomy, physiology, and the natural sciences. Of their value in directing rational exercise he says: "Anatomy, that sacred genesis, which shows us the masterpiece of the Creator, and which teaches us how little and how great man is, ought to form the constant study of the gymnast.
This same gymnast owns a fine horse. Ask him to lend that horse to draw before a cart and he will refuse, because such labor would make the animal stiff, and unfit him for light, graceful movements before the carriage. The same physiological law holds true of man: lifting great weights affects him as drawing heavy loads affects the horse.
To his left, some eight feet away, was the fire escape before the rear window of the girl's bedroom. Standing on that sharp edge, he realized that in no way could he reach the railing of the fire escape, except by jumping, a feat that an expert gymnast might have hesitated to attempt, at that height above the ground.
"For example," writes Mr Braidwood, "a fireman untrained in gymnastics, on the third or fourth floor of a burning house, with the branch in his hands, who is uncertain as to his means of escape, in the event of his return by the stair being cut off, will be too much concerned about his own safety to render much service, and will certainly not be half so efficient as the experienced gymnast, who, with a hatchet and eighty feet of rope at his waist, and a window near him, feels himself in comparative security, knowing that he has the means and the power of lowering himself easily and safely into the street" a knowledge which not only gives him confidence, but enables him to give his undistracted attention to the exigencies of the fire.
Ling, a patriot, a gymnast and a poet, who was inspired to revive the ancestral national spirit in the Swedish people by the aid of sports and songs, and to develop once more the great qualities of strength, courage, and endurance which in old times distinguished the Scandinavian race.
The climax was reserved for the demure one-legged gymnast, who suddenly produced a pistol and discharged it in the air. When the panic subsided, he explained to the landlord and the company that he was "paying his shot."
But for a young lady in long skirts to make her way down that balsam, squirming about and through the stubs and dead limbs, testing each one before she trusted her weight to it, was another affair. It needed a very cool head and the skill of a gymnast.
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