suddenly shifted their course, and worked upward instead of down. Lest,
however, they should suddenly resume their original bias, let us cross
to the dressing-room, and, while you are assuming flannel shirt or
complete gymnastic suit, as you may prefer, let us consider the merits
of the Gymnasium.

Do not say that the public is growing tired of hearing about physical
training. You might as well speak of being surfeited with the sight of
apple-blossoms, or bored with roses,--for these athletic exercises are,
to a healthy person, just as good and refreshing. Of course, any one
becomes insupportable who talks all the time of this subject, or of any
other; but it is the man who fatigues you, not the theme. Any person
becomes morbid and tedious whose whole existence is absorbed in any
one thing, be it playing or praying. Queen Elizabeth, after admiring a
gentleman's dancing, refused to look at the dancing-master, who did it
better. "Nay," quoth her bluff Majesty,--"'tis his business,--I'll none
of him." Professionals grow tiresome. Books are good,--so is a boat;
but a librarian and a ferryman, though useful to take you where you
wish to go, are not necessarily enlivening as companions. The annals
of "Boxiana" and "Pedestriana" and "The Cricket-Field" are as pathetic
records of monomania as the bibliographical works of Mr. Thomas Dibdin.
Margaret Fuller said truly, that we all delight in gossip, and differ
only in the department of gossip we individually prefer; but a monotony
of gossip soon grows tedious, be the theme horses or octavos.

Not one-tenth part of the requisite amount has yet been said of athletic
exercises as a prescription for this community. There was a time when
they were not even practised generally among American boys, if we may
trust the foreign travellers of a half-century ago, and they are but
just being raised into respectability among American men. Motley says