Good casts of these and other masterpieces in statuary may be had at a trifling cost.  Why are they not generally introduced into the gymnasia attached to our colleges and schools?  The habitual contemplation of such works could not fail to have a good effect upon the physical bearing and development of the young.  We are the creatures of imitation.  I remember, at the school I attended in my seventh year, the strongest boy among my mates was quite round-shouldered.  Fancying that he derived his strength from his stoop, I began to imitate him; and it was not till I learned that he was strong in spite of his round shoulders, and not because of them, that I gave up aping his peculiarity.

On the 29th of January, 1856, I lifted seven hundred pounds in Bailey’s Gymnasium, Franklin Street, Boston.  The exhibition created great surprise among the lookers-on; and at that time it was, perhaps, an extraordinary feat; but since the extension and growth of the lifting mania, it would not be regarded by the knowing ones as anything to marvel at.  The fourth of April following, my lifting capacity had reached eight hundred and forty pounds.

On Fast-Day of that year, two Irishmen knocked at my door and asked to see the strong man.  I presented myself, and they told me there was great curiosity among the “ould counthrymen” in the vicinity to ascertain if one Pat Farren, the strongest Irishman in Roxbury, could lift my weight.  “Would it be convanient for me to let him thry?” “Certainly,—­and I think he’ll lift it,” I modestly added.

Soon afterwards a delegation of Irishmen, rather startling from its numbers, entered the yard.  Among them was Mr. Farren.  They surrounded my lifting-apparatus, while I, unseen, surveyed them from a back window.  I saw Mr. Farren take the handle, straddle the hogshead, throw himself into a lifting posture, and, straining every muscle to its utmost tension, give a tremendous pull.  But the weight made no sign; and his friends, thinking he was merely feeling it, said, “Wait a bit,—­Pat’ll have it up the next pull.”  Mr. Farren rested a moment,—­then threw off his coat, rubbed his hands, and, seizing the handle a second time, tugged away at it till his muscles swelled and his frame quivered.  But he failed in starting the barrel, and a burst of laughter from his friends and backers announced his defeat.

It is now but justice to Mr. Farren to say that it could hardly be expected of him to lift such a weight at either the first trial or the second.  A want of confidence, or the maladjustment of the rope, might have interfered with the full exercise of his strength.  I need not say that his discomfiture was witnessed by me from my hiding-place with the liveliest satisfaction; for I had begun to pride myself on being able to outlift any man in the country.