boots on; his little daughter must help him with his shoes, and the indignant wife of his bosom must put on his hat, with that ineffectual one-sidedness to which alone the best-regulated female mind can attain, in this difficult part of costuming.  His sorrows increase as the day passes; the gymnasium alone can relieve them, but his soul shudders at the remedy; and he can conceive of nothing so absurd as a first gymnastic lesson, except a second one.  But had he been wise enough to place himself under an experienced adviser at the very beginning, he would have been put through a few simple movements which would have sent him home glowing and refreshed and fancying himself half-way back to boyhood again; the slight ache and weariness of next day would have been cured by next day’s exercise; and after six months’ patience, by a progress almost imperceptible, he would have found himself, in respect to strength and activity, a transformed man.

Most of these discomforts, of course, are spared to boys; their frames are more elastic and less liable to ache and strain.  They learn gymnastics, as they learn everything else, more readily than their elders.  Begin with a boy early enough, and if he be of a suitable temperament, he can learn in the gymnasium all the feats usually seen in the circus-ring, and could even acquire more difficult ones, if it were worth his while to try them.  This is true even of the air-somersets and hand-springs which are not so commonly cultivated by gymnasts; but it is especially true of all exercises with apparatus.  It is astonishing how readily our classes pick up any novelty brought into town by a strolling company,—­holding the body out horizontally from an upright pole, or hanging by the back of the head, or touching the head to the heels, though this last is oftener tried than accomplished.  They may be seen practising these antics, at all spare moments, for weeks, until some later hobby drives them away.  From Blondin downwards, the public feats derive a large part of their wonder from the imposing height in the air at which they are done.  Many a young man who can swing himself more than his own length on the horizontal ladder at the gymnasium has yet shuddered at l’echelle perilleuse of the Hanlons; and I noticed that even the simplest of their performances, such as holding by one hand, or hanging by the knees, seemed perfectly terrific when done at a height of twenty or thirty feet in the air, even to those who had done them a hundred times at a lower level.  It was the nerve that was astounding, not the strength or skill; but the eye found it hard to draw the distinction.  So when a gymnastic friend of mine, crossing the ocean lately, amused himself with hanging by one leg to the mizzen-topmast-stay, the boldest sailors shuddered, though the feat itself was nothing, save to the imagination.