My father had incautiously remarked to me, “Those huge fellows, with a little practice, can lift your weight and you on top of it.  You can’t expect to compete with giants.”  This decided me to test the question whether five feet seven must necessarily yield to mere bulk in the attainment of the maximum of human strength.  I had the start of my competitors by some two hundred pounds, and I determined to preserve that distance between us.  In the autumn of that year I advanced to lifting with the hands eleven hundred and thirty-three pounds, and in the spring of 1860 to twelve hundred and eight.  I have had no evidence that my competitors ever got beyond a thousand pounds; though I doubt not, if they had had my leisure for practice, they might have surpassed me.

In July, 1860, I commenced lifting by means of a padded rope over my shoulders,—­my body, during the act of lifting, being steadied and partly supported by my hands grasping a stout frame at each side.  After a few unsuccessful preliminary trials, I quickly advanced to fourteen hundred pounds.  The stretching of the rope now proved so great an annoyance, that I substituted for it a stout leather band of double thickness, about two inches and a half wide, and which had been subjected to a process which was calculated to render it proof against stretching more than half an inch under any weight it was capable of sustaining.  But on trial, I found, almost to my despair, that it was of a far more yielding nature than the rope, and consequently the rope was again brought into requisition.  A few weeks of unsatisfactory practice followed, when it occurred to me that an iron chain, inasmuch as it could not stretch, might be advantageously used, provided it could be so padded as not to chafe my shoulders.  After many experiments I succeeded in this substitution; but the chain had yet one objection in common with the rope and the strap, arising from the difficulty of getting it properly adjusted.  I contented myself with its use, however, until the spring of 1861, when I hit upon a contrivance which has proved a complete success.  It consists of a wooden yoke fitting across my shoulders, and having two chains connected with it in such a manner as to enable me to lift on every occasion to the most advantage.  With this contrivance my lifting-power has advanced with mathematical certainty, slowly, but surely, to two thousand and seven pounds, up to this twenty-third day of November, 1861.

In my public experiments in lifting, when I have not used the iron weights cast for the purpose, I have, as a convenient substitute, used kegs of nails.  It recently occurred to me, that, if, instead of these kegs, I could employ a number of men selected from the audience, the spectacle would he still more satisfactory to the skeptical.  Accordingly I contrived an apparatus by means of which I have been able to present this convincing proof of the actual weight lifted.  I introduced it after my lecture at the Town-Hall in Brighton, Massachusetts, on the 9th of October, 1861; and the following account of the result appeared in one of the city papers:—­