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Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene by G. Stanley Hall
page 72 of 425 (16%)
occasional, as it is likely to be with equal opportunity for
out-of-door exercises and especially sports, practise is sometimes
hygienic almost inversely to its amount, while even lameness from
initial excess has its lessons, and the sense of manifoldness of
inferiorities brought home by experiences gives a wholesome
self-knowledge and stimulus.

In this country more than elsewhere, especially in high school and
college, gymnasium work has been brought into healthful connection
with field sports and record competitions for both teams and
individuals who aspire to championship. This has given the former a
healthful stimulus although it is felt only by a picked few. Scores of
records have been established for running, walking, hurdling,
throwing, putting, swimming, rowing, skating, etc., each for various
shorter and longer distances and under manifold conditions, and for
both amateurs and professionals, who are easily accessible. These, in
general, show a slow but steady advance in this country since 1876,
when athletics were established here. In that year there was not a
single world's best record held by an American amateur, and
high-school boys of to-day could in most, though not in all lines,
have won the American championship twenty-five years ago. Of course,
in a strict sense, intercollegiate contests do not show the real
advance in athletics, because it is not necessary for a man in order
to win a championship to do his best; but they do show general
improvement.

We select for our purpose a few of those records longest kept. Not
dependent on external conditions like boat-racing, or on improved
apparatus like bicycling, we have interesting data of a very different
order for physical measurements. These down to present writing--July,
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