lower yourself an indefinite number of times. As for the weights and
clubs and dumb-bells, you feel as if there must be some jugglery about
them,--they have grown so much lighter than they used to be. It is you
who have gained a double set of muscles to every limb; that is all.
Strike out from the shoulder with your clenched hand; once your arm was
loose-jointed and shaky; now it is firm and tense, and begins to feel
like a natural arm. Moreover, strength and suppleness have grown
together; you have not stiffened by becoming stronger, but find yourself
more flexible. When you first came here, you could not touch your
fingers to the ground without bending the knees, and now you can place
your knuckles on the floor; then you could scarcely bend yourself
backward, and now you can lay the back of your head in a chair, or walk,
without crouching forward, under a bar less than three feet from
the ground. You have found, indeed, that almost every feat is done
originally by sheer strength, and then by agility, requiring very little
expenditure of force after the precise motion is hit upon; at first
labor, puffing, and a red face,--afterwards ease and the graces.

To a person who begins after the age of thirty or thereabouts, the
increase of strength and suppleness, of course, comes more slowly; yet
it comes as surely, and perhaps it is a more permanent acquisition, less
easily lost again, than in the softer frame of early youth. There is no
doubt that men of sixty have experienced a decided gain in strength and
health by beginning gymnastic exercises even at that age, as Socrates
learned to dance at seventy; and if they have practised similar
exercises all their lives, so much is added to their chance of
preserving physical youthfulness to the last. Jerome and Gabriel Ravel
are reported to have spent near three-score years on the planet which
their winged feet have so lightly trod; and who will dare to say how
many winters have passed over the head of the still young and graceful