of a large lighted room, a mere human machine-shop of busy motion, where
Indian clubs are whirling, dumb-bells pounding, swings vibrating, and
arms and legs flying in all manner of unexpected directions. Henderson
sits with his big proportions quietly rested against the weight-boxes,
pulling with monotonous vigor at the fifty-pound weights,--"the
Stationary Engine" the boys call him. For a contrast, Draper is floating
up and down between the parallel bars with such an airy lightness, that
you think he must have hung up his body in the dressing-room, and is
exercising only in his arms and clothes. Parsons is swinging in the
rings, rising to the ceiling before and behind; up and down he goes,
whirling over and over, converting himself into a mere tumbler-pigeon,
yet still bound by the long, steady vibration of the human pendulum.
Another is running a race with him, if sitting in the swing be running;
and still another is accompanying their motion, clinging to the
_trapèze_. Hayes, meanwhile, is spinning on the horizontal bar, now
backward, now forward, twenty times without stopping, pinioned through
his bent arms, like a Fakir on his iron. See how many different ways
of ascending a vertical pole these boys are devising!--one climbs with
hands and legs, another with hands only, another is crawling up on
all-fours in Feegee fashion, while another is pegging his way up by
inserting pegs in holes a foot apart,--you will see him sway and
tremble a bit, before he reaches the ceiling. Others are at work with a
spring-board and leaping-cord; higher and higher the cord is moved, one
by one the competitors step aside defeated, till the field is left to a
single champion, who, like an India-rubber ball, goes on rebounding till
he seems likely to disappear through the chimney, like a Ravel. Some
sturdy young visitors, farmers by their looks, are trying their
strength, with various success, at the sixty-pound dumb-bell, when some
quiet fellow, a clerk or a tailor, walks modestly to the hundred-pound
weight, and up it goes as steadily as if the laws of gravitation had