When ill, we eat to support life; when well, we eat because the food tastes good.  It is a merit of the gymnasium, that, when properly taken, it makes one forget to think about health or anything else that is troublesome; “a man remembereth neither sorrow nor debt”; cares must be left outside, be they physical or metaphysical, like canes at the door of a museum.

No doubt, to some it grows tedious.  It shares this objection with all means of exercise.  To be an American is to hunger for novelty; and all instruments and appliances, especially, require constant modification:  we are dissatisfied with last winter’s skates, with the old boat, and with the family pony.  So the zealot finds the gymnasium insufficient long before he has learned half the moves.  To some temperaments it becomes a treadmill, and that, strangely enough, to diametrically opposite temperaments.  A lethargic youth, requiring great effort to keep himself awake between the exercises, thinks the gymnasium slow, because he is; while an eager, impetuous young fellow, exasperated because he cannot in a fortnight draw himself up by one hand, finds the same trouble there as elsewhere, that the laws of Nature are not fast enough for his inclinations.  No one without energy, no one without patience, can find permanent interest in a gymnasium; but with these qualities, and a modest willingness to live and learn, I do not see why one should ever grow tired of the moderate use of its apparatus.  For one, I really never enter it without exhilaration, or leave it without a momentary regret:  there are always certain special new things on the docket for trial; and when those are settled, there will be something more.  It is amazing what a variety of interest can be extracted from those few bits of wood and rope and iron.  There is always somebody in advance, some “man on horseback” on a wooden horse, some India-rubber hero, some slight and powerful fellow who does with ease what you fail to do with toil, some terrible Dr. Windship with an ever-waxing dumb-bell.  The interest becomes semi-professional.  A good gymnast enjoys going into a new and well-appointed establishment, precisely as a sailor enjoys a well-rigged ship; every rope and spar is scanned with intelligent interest; “we know the forest round us as seamen know the sea.”  The pupils talk gymnasium as some men talk horse.  A particularly smooth and flexible horizontal pole, a desirable pair of parallel bars, a remarkably elastic spring-board,—­these are matters of personal pride, and described from city to city with loving enthusiasm.  The gymnastic apostle rises to eloquence in proportion to the height of the handswings, and points his climax to match the peak-ladders.