the weights and clubs and dumb-bells, you feel as if there must be some jugglery about them,—­they have grown so much lighter than they used to be.  It is you who have gained a double set of muscles to every limb; that is all.  Strike out from the shoulder with your clenched hand; once your arm was loose-jointed and shaky; now it is firm and tense, and begins to feel like a natural arm.  Moreover, strength and suppleness have grown together; you have not stiffened by becoming stronger, but find yourself more flexible.  When you first came here, you could not touch your fingers to the ground without bending the knees, and now you can place your knuckles on the floor; then you could scarcely bend yourself backward, and now you can lay the back of your head in a chair, or walk, without crouching forward, under a bar less than three feet from the ground.  You have found, indeed, that almost every feat is done originally by sheer strength, and then by agility, requiring very little expenditure of force after the precise motion is hit upon; at first labor, puffing, and a red face,—­afterwards ease and the graces.

To a person who begins after the age of thirty or thereabouts, the increase of strength and suppleness, of course, comes more slowly; yet it comes as surely, and perhaps it is a more permanent acquisition, less easily lost again, than in the softer frame of early youth.  There is no doubt that men of sixty have experienced a decided gain in strength and health by beginning gymnastic exercises even at that age, as Socrates learned to dance at seventy; and if they have practised similar exercises all their lives, so much is added to their chance of preserving physical youthfulness to the last.  Jerome and Gabriel Ravel are reported to have spent near three-score years on the planet which their winged feet have so lightly trod; and who will dare to say how many winters have passed over the head of the still young and graceful Papanti?

Dr. Windship’s most important experience is, that strength is to a certain extent identical with health, so that every increase in muscular development is an actual protection against disease.  Americans, who are ashamed to confess to doing the most innocent thing for the sake of mere enjoyment, must be cajoled into every form of exercise under the plea of health.  Joining, the other day, in a children’s dance, I was amused by a solemn parent who turned to me, in the midst of a Virginia reel, still conscientious, though breathless, and asked if I did not consider dancing to be, on the whole, a healthy exercise?  Well, the gymnasium is healthy; but the less you dwell on that fact, the better, after you have once entered it.  If it does you good, you will enjoy it; and if you enjoy it, it will do you good.  With body, as with soul, the highest experience merges duty in pleasure.  The better one’s condition is, the less one has to think about growing better, and the more unconsciously one’s natural instincts guide the right way.