Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 by Various
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Various >> Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858
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Again, the practice of match-playing is opposed to our habits, both as
a consumer of time and as partaking too much of gambling. Still, it is
done in the case of "firemen's musters," which are, we believe, a wholly
indigenous institution. We have known a very few cases where the young
men of neighboring country parishes have challenged each other to games
of base-ball, as is common in England; and there was, if we mistake not,
a recent match at football between the boys of the Fall River and
the New Bedford High Schools. And within a few years regattas and
cricket-matches have become common events. Still, these public
exhibitions are far from being a full exponent of the athletic habits of
our people; and there is really more going on among us than this meagre
"pentathlon" exhibits.
Again, a foreigner is apt to infer, from the more desultory and
unsystematized character of our out-door amusements, that we are less
addicted to them than we really are. But this belongs to the habit of
our nation, impatient, to a fault, of precedents and conventionalisms.
The English-born Frank Forrester complains of the total indifference
of our sportsmen to correct phraseology. We should say, he urges, "for
large flocks of wild fowl,--of swans, a _whiteness_,--of geese, a
_gaggle_,--of brent, a _gang_,--of duck, a _team_ or a _plump_,--of
widgeon, a _trip_,--of snipes, a _wisp_,--of larks, an _exaltation_.--The
young of grouse are _cheepers_,--of quail, _squeakers_,--of
wild duck, _flappers_." And yet, careless of these proprieties,
Young America goes "gunning" to good purpose. So with all
games. A college football-player reads with astonishment Tom Brown's
description of the very complicated performance which passes under that
name at Rugby. So cricket is simplified; it is hard to organize
an American club into the conventional distribution of point and
cover-point, long slip and short slip, but the players persist in
winning the game by the most heterodox grouping. This constitutional
independence has its good and evil results, in sports as elsewhere. It
is this which has created the American breed of trotting horses, and
which won the Cowes regatta by a mainsail as flat as a board.
But, so far as there is a deficiency in these respects among us, this
generation must not shrink from the responsibility. It is unfair
to charge it on the Puritans. They are not even answerable for
Massachusetts; for there is no doubt that athletic exercises, of some
sort, were far more generally practised in this community before the
Revolution than at present. A state of almost constant Indian warfare
then created an obvious demand for muscle and agility. At present there
is no such immediate necessity. And it has been supposed that a race of
shopkeepers, brokers, and lawyers could live without bodies. Now that
the terrible records of dyspepsia and paralysis are disproving this, we
may hope for a reaction in favor of bodily exercises. And when we once
begin the competition, there seems no reason why any other nation should
surpass us. The wide area of our country, and its variety of surface and
shore, offer a corresponding range of physical training. Take our coasts
and inland waters alone. It is one thing to steer a pleasure-boat with a
rudder, and another to steer a dory with an oar; one thing to paddle a
birch-canoe, and another to paddle a ducking-float; in a Charles River
club-boat, the post of honor is in the stern,--in a Penobscot _bateau_,
in the bow; and each of these experiences educates a different set of
muscles. Add to this the constitutional American receptiveness, which
welcomes new pursuits without distinction of origin,--unites German
gymnastics with English sports and sparring, and takes the red Indians
for instructors in paddling and running. With these various aptitudes,
we certainly ought to become a nation of athletes.
We have shown, that, in one way or another, American schoolboys obtain
active exercise. The same is true, in a very limited degree, even
of girls. They are occasionally, in our larger cities, sent to
gymnasiums,--the more the better. Dancing-schools are better than
nothing, though all the attendant circumstances are usually unfavorable.
A fashionable young lady is estimated to traverse her three hundred
miles a season on foot; and this needs training. But out-door exercise
for girls is terribly restricted, first by their costume, and secondly
by the remarks of Mrs. Grundy. All young female animals unquestionably
require as much motion as their brothers, and naturally make as much
noise; but what mother would not be shocked, in the case of her girl of
twelve, by one-tenth part the activity and uproar which are recognized
as being the breath of life to her twin brother? Still, there is a
change going on, which is tantamount to an admission that there is an
evil to be remedied. Twenty years ago, if we mistake not, it was by no
means considered "proper" for little girls to play with their hoops
and balls on Boston Common; and swimming and skating have hardly been
recognized as "ladylike" for half that period of time.
Still it is beyond question, that far more out-door exercise is
habitually taken by the female population of almost all European
countries than by our own. In the first place, the peasant women of all
other countries (a class non-existent here) are trained to active
labor from childhood; and what traveller has not seen, on foreign
mountain-paths, long rows of maidens ascending and descending the
difficult ways, bearing heavy burdens on their heads, and winning by the
exercise such a superb symmetry and grace of figure as were a new wonder
of the world to Cisatlantic eyes? Among the higher classes, physical
exercises take the place of these things. Miss Beecher glowingly
describes a Russian female seminary in which nine hundred girls of the
noblest families were being trained by Ling's system of calisthenics,
and her informant declared that she never beheld such an array of
girlish health and beauty. Englishwomen, again, have horsemanship and
pedestrianism, in which their ordinary feats appear to our healthy women
incredible. Thus, Mary Lamb writes to Miss Wordsworth, (both ladies
being between fifty and sixty,) "You say you can walk fifteen miles with
ease; that is exactly my stint, and more fatigues me"; and then speaks
pityingly of a delicate lady who could accomplish only "four or five
miles every third or fourth day, keeping very quiet between." How few
American ladies, in the fulness of their strength, (if female strength
among us has any fulness,) can surpass this English invalid!
But even among American men, how few carry athletic habits into manhood!
The great hindrance, no doubt, is absorption in business; and we observe
that this winter's hard times and consequent leisure have given a great
stimulus to outdoor sports. But in most places there is the further
obstacle, that a certain stigma of boyishness goes with them. So early
does this begin, that we remember, in our teens, to have been slightly
reproached with juvenility, because, though a Senior Sophister, we still
clung to football. Juvenility! We only wish we had the opportunity now.
Full-grown men are, of course, intended to take not only as much, but
far more active exercise than boys. Some physiologists go so far as
to demand six hours of out-door life daily; and it is absurd in us to
complain that we have not the healthy animal happiness of children,
while we forswear their simple sources of pleasure.
Most of the exercise habitually taken by men of sedentary pursuits is
in the form of walking. We believe its merits to be greatly overrated.
Walking is to real exercise what vegetable food is to animal; it
satisfies the appetite, but the nourishment is not sufficiently
concentrated to be invigorating. It takes a man out-doors, and it uses
his muscles, and therefore of course it is good; but it is not the best
kind of good. Walking, for walking's sake, becomes tedious. We must not
ignore the _play-impulse_ in human nature, which, according to Schiller,
is the foundation of all Art. In female boarding-schools, teachers
uniformly testify to the aversion of pupils to the prescribed walk.
Give them a sled, or a pair of skates, or a row-boat, or put them on
horseback, and they will protract the period of exercise till the
teacher in turn grumbles. Put them into a gymnasium, with an efficient
teacher, and they will soon require restraint, instead of urging.
Gymnastic exercises have two disadvantages: one, in being commonly
performed under cover (though this may sometimes prove an advantage as
well); another, in requiring apparatus, and at first a teacher. These
apart, perhaps no other form of exercise is so universally invigorating.
A teacher is required, less for the sake of stimulus than of precaution.
The tendency is almost always to dare too much; and there is also need
of a daily moderation in commencing exercises; for the wise pupil will
always prefer to supple his muscles by mild exercises and calisthenics,
before proceeding to harsher performances on the bars and ladders. With
this precaution, strains are easily avoided; even with this, the hand
will sometimes blister and the body ache, but perseverance will cure the
one and Russia Salve the other; and the invigorated life in every
limb will give a perpetual charm to those seemingly aimless leaps and
somersets. The feats once learned, a private gymnasium can easily be
constructed, of the simplest apparatus, and so daily used; though
nothing can wholly supply the stimulus afforded by a class in a public
institution, with a competent teacher. In summer, the whole thing can
partially be dispensed with; but we are really unable to imagine how any
person gets through the winter happily without a gymnasium.
For the favorite in-door exercise of dumb-bells we have little to say;
they are not an enlivening performance, nor do they task a variety of
muscles,--while they are apt to strain and fatigue them, if used with
energy. Far better, for a solitary exercise, is the Indian club, a
lineal descendant of that antique one in whose handle rare medicaments
were fabled to be concealed. The modern one is simply a rounded club,
weighing from four pounds upwards, according to the strength of the
pupil; grasping a pair of these by the handles, he learns a variety of
exercises, having always before him the feats of the marvellous Mr.
Harrison, whose praise is in the "Spirit of the Times," and whose
portrait adorns the back of Dr. Trall's Gymnastics. By the latest
bulletins, that gentleman measured forty-two and a half inches round the
chest, and employed clubs weighing no less than forty-seven pounds.
It may seem to our non-resistant friends to be going rather far, if we
should indulge our saints in taking boxing lessons; yet it is not long
since a New York clergyman saved his life in Broadway by the judicious
administration of a "cross-counter" or a "flying crook," and we have
not heard of his excommunication from the Church Militant. No doubt, a
laudable aversion prevails, in this country, to the English practices of
pugilism; yet it must be remembered that sparring is, by its very name,
a "science of self-defence"; and if a gentleman wishes to know how to
hold a rude antagonist at bay, in any emergency, and keep out of an
undignified scuffle, the means are most easily afforded him by the art,
which Pythagoras founded. Apart from this, boxing exercises every muscle
in the body, and gives a wonderful quickness to eye and hand. These same
remarks apply, though in a minor degree, to fencing also.
Billiards is a graceful game, and affords, in some respects, admirable
training, but is hardly to be classed among athletic exercises. Tenpins
afford, perhaps, the most popular form of exercise among us, and have
become almost a national game, and a good one, too, so far as it goes.
The English game of bowls is less entertaining, and is, indeed, rather a
sluggish sport, though it has the merit of being played in the open air.
The severer British sports, as tennis and rackets, are scarcely more
than names, to us Americans.
Passing now to outdoor exercises, (and no one should confine himself to
in-door ones,) we hold with the Thalesian school, and rank water first.
Vishnu Sarma gives, in his apologues, the characteristics of the fit
place for a wise man to live in, and enumerates among its necessities
first "a Rajah" and then "a river." Democrats as we are, we can dispense
with the first, but not with the second. A square mile even of pond
water is worth a year's schooling to any intelligent boy. A boat is a
kingdom. We personally own one,--a mere flat-bottomed "float," with a
centre-board. It has seen service,--it is eight years old,--has spent
two winters under the ice, and been fished in by boys every day for as
many summers. It grew at last so hopelessly leaky, that even the boys
disdained it. It cost seven dollars originally, and we would not sell it
to-day for seventeen. To own the poorest boat is better than hiring the
best. It is a link to Nature; without a boat, one is so much the less a
man.
Sailing is of course delicious; it is as good as flying to steer
anything with wings of canvas, whether one stand by the wheel of a
clipper-ship, or by the clumsy stern-oar of a "gundalow." But rowing has
also its charms; and the Indian noiselessness of the paddle, beneath the
fringing branches of the Assabeth or Artichoke, puts one into Fairyland
at once, and Hiawatha's _cheemaun_ becomes a possible possession. Rowing
is peculiarly graceful and appropriate as a feminine exercise, and any
able-bodied girl can learn to handle one light oar at the first lesson,
and two at the second; this, at least, we demand of our own pupils.
Swimming has also a birdlike charm of motion. The novel element, the
free action, the abated drapery, give a sense of personal contact
with Nature which nothing else so fully bestows. No later triumph of
existence is so fascinating, perhaps, as that in which the boy first
wins his panting way across the deep gulf that severs one green bank
from another, (ten yards, perhaps,) and feels himself thenceforward lord
of the watery world. The Athenian phrase for a man who knew nothing was,
that he could "neither read nor swim." Yet there is a vast amount of
this ignorance; the majority of sailors, it is said, cannot swim a
stroke; and in a late lake disaster, many able-bodied men perished
by drowning, in calm water, only half a mile from shore. At our
watering-places it is rare to see a swimmer venture out more than a rod
or two, though this proceeds partly from the fear of sharks,--as if
sharks of the dangerous order were not far more afraid of the rocks
than the swimmers of being eaten. But the fact of the timidity is
unquestionable; and we were told by a certain clerical frequenter of a
watering-place, himself a robust swimmer, that he had never met but two
companions who would venture boldly out with him, both being ministers,
and one a distinguished Ex-President of Brown University. We place this
fact to the credit of the bodies of our saints.
But space forbids us thus to descant on the details of all active
exercises. Riding may be left to the eulogies of Mr. N.P. Willis, and
cricket to Mr. Lillywhite's "Guide." We will only say, in passing, that
it is pleasant to see the rapid spread of clubs for the latter game,
which a few years since was practised only by a few transplanted
Englishmen and Scotchmen; and it is pleasant also to observe the twin
growth of our indigenous American game of base-ball, whose briskness
and unceasing activity are perhaps more congenial, after all, to our
national character, than the comparative deliberation of cricket.
Football, bating its roughness, is the most glorious of all games to
those whose animal life is sufficiently vigorous to enjoy it. Skating is
just at present the fashion for ladies as well as gentlemen, and needs
no apostle; the open weather of the current winter has been unusually
favorable for its practice, and it is destined to become a permanent
institution.
A word, in passing, on the literature of athletic exercises; it is too
scanty to detain us long. Five hundred books, it is estimated, have been
written on the digestive organs, but we shall not speak of half a
dozen in connection with the muscular powers. The common Physiologies
recommend exercise in general terms, but seldom venture on details;
unhappily, they are written, for the most part, by men who have already
lost their own health, and are therefore useful as warnings rather than
examples. The first real book of gymnastics printed in this country, so
far as we know, was the work of the veteran Salzmann, translated and
published in Philadelphia, in 1802, and sometimes to be met with in
libraries,--an odd, desultory book, with many good reasonings and
suggestions, and quaint pictures of youths exercising in the old German
costume. Like Dr. Follen's gymnasium, at Cambridge, it was probably
transplanted too early, and produced no effect. Next came, in 1836, the
book which is still, after twenty years, the standard, so far as it
goes,--Walker's "Manly Exercises,"--a thoroughly English book, and
needing adaptation to our habits, but full of manly vigor, and
containing good and copious directions for skating, swimming, boating,
and horsemanship. The only later general treatise worth naming is Dr.
Trall's recently published "Family Gymnasium,"--a good book, yet not
good enough. On gymnastics proper it contains scarcely anything; and the
essays on rowing, riding, and skating are so meagre, that they might
almost as well have been omitted, though that on swimming is excellent.
The main body of the book is devoted to the subject of calisthenics,
and especially to Ling's system; all this is valuable for its novelty,
although we cannot imagine how a system so tediously elaborate and so
little interesting can ever be made very useful for American pupils.
Miss Beecher has an excellent essay on calisthenics, with very useful
figures, at the end of her "Physiology." And on proper gymnastic
exercises there is a little book so full and admirable, that it
atones for the defects of all the others,--"Paul Preston's
Gymnastics,"--nominally a child's book, but so spirited and graphic,
and entering so admirably into the whole extent of the subject, that it
ought to be reprinted and find ten thousand readers.
In our own remarks, we have purposely confined ourselves to those
physical exercises which partake most of the character of sports.
Field-sports alone we have omitted, because these are so often discussed
by abler hands. Mechanical and horticultural labors lie out of our
present province. So do the walks and labors of the artist and the man
of science. The out-door study of natural history alone is a vast
field, even yet very little entered upon. In how many American towns or
villages are to be found _local collections_ of natural objects, such as
every large town in Europe affords, and without which the foundations of
thorough knowledge cannot be laid? We can scarcely point to any. We have
innumerable fragmentary and aimless "Museums,"--collections of South-Sea
shells in inland villages, and of aboriginal remains in seaport
towns,--mere curiosity-shops, which no man confers any real benefit by
collecting; while the most ignorant person may be a true benefactor
to science by forming a cabinet, however scanty, of the animal and
vegetable productions of his own township. We have often heard Professor
Agassiz lament this waste of energy, and we would urge upon all our
readers to do their share to remedy the defect, while they invigorate
their bodies by the exercise which the effort will give, and the joyous
open-air life into which it will take them.
For, after all, the secret charm of all these sports and studies is
simply this,--that they bring us into more familiar intercourse
with Nature. They give us that _vitam sub divo_ in which the Roman
exulted,--those out-door days, which, say the Arabs, are not to be
reckoned in the length of life. Nay, to a true lover of the open air,
night beneath its curtain is as beautiful as day. We personally have
camped out under a variety of auspices,--before a fire of pine logs in
the forests of Maine, beside a blaze of faya-boughs on the steep side of
a foreign volcano, and beside no fire at all, (except a possible one
of Sharp's rifles,) in that domestic volcano, Kansas; and every such
remembrance is worth many nights of indoor slumber. We never found a
week in the year, nor an hour of day or night, which had not, in
the open air, its own special beauty. We will not say, with Reade's
Australians, that the only use of a house is to sleep in the lee of it;
but there is method in even that madness. As for rain, it is chiefly
formidable indoors. Lord Bacon used to ride with uncovered head in a
shower, and loved "to feel the spirit of the universe upon his brow";
and we once knew an enthusiastic hydropathic physician who loved to
expose himself in thunder-storms at midnight, without a shred of earthly
clothing between himself and the atmosphere. Some prudent persons may
possibly regard this as being rather an extreme, while yet their own
extreme of avoidance of every breath from heaven is really the more
extravagantly unreasonable of the two.
It is easy for the sentimentalist to say, "But if the object is, after
all, the enjoyment of Nature, why not go and enjoy her, without any
collateral aim?" Because it is the universal experience of man, that, if
we have a collateral aim, we enjoy her far more. He knows not the beauty
of the universe, who has not learned the subtile mystery, that Nature
loves to work on us by _indirections_. Astronomers say, that, when
observing with the naked eye, you see a star less clearly by looking
at it, than by looking at the next one. Margaret Fuller's fine saying
touches the same point,--"Nature will not be stared at." Go out merely
to enjoy her, and it seems a little tame, and you begin to suspect
yourself of affectation. We know persons who, after years of abstinence
from athletic sports or the pursuits of the naturalist or artist, have
resumed them, simply in order to restore to the woods and the sunsets
the zest of the old fascination. Go out under pretence of shooting on
the marshes or botanizing in the forests; study entomology, that most
fascinating, most neglected of all the branches of natural history; go
to paint a red maple-leaf in autumn, or watch a pickerel-line in winter;
meet Nature on the cricket ground or at the regatta; swim with her, ride
with her, run with her, and she gladly takes you back once more within
the horizon of her magic, and your heart of manhood is born again into
more than the fresh happiness of the boy.
* * * * *
BY THE DEAD.
Pride that sat on the beautiful brow,
Scorn that lay in the arching lips,
Will of the oak-grain, where are ye now?
I may dare to touch her finger-tips!
Deep, flaming eyes, ye are shallow enough;
The steadiest fire burns out at last.
Throw back the shutters,--the sky is rough,
And the winds are high,--but the night is past.
Mother, I speak with the voice of a man;
Death is between us,--I stoop no more;
And yet so dim is each new-born plan,
I am feebler than ever I was before,--
Feebler than when the western hill
Faded away with its sunset gold.
Mother, your voice seemed dark and chill,
And your words made my young heart very cold.
You talked of fame,--but my thoughts would stray
To the brook that laughed across the lane;
And of hopes for me,--but your hand's light play
On my brow was ice to my shrinking brain;
And you called me your son, your only son,--
But I felt your eye on my tortured heart
To and fro, like a spider, run,
On a quivering web;--'twas a cruel art!
But crueller, crueller far, the art
Of the low, quick laugh that Memory hears!
Mother, I lay my head on your heart;
Has it throbbed even once these fifty years?
Throbbed even once, by some strange heat thawed?
It would then have warmed to her, poor thing,
Who echoed your laugh with a cry!--O God,
When in my soul will it cease to ring?
Starlike her eyes were,--but yours were blind;
Sweet her red lips,--but yours were curled;
Pure her young heart,--but yours,--ah, you find
This, mother, is not the only world!
She came,--bright gleam of the dawning day;
She went,--pale dream of the winding-sheet.
Mother, they come to me and say
Your headstone will almost touch her feet!
You are walking now in a strange, dim land:
Tell me, has pride gone with you there?
Does a frail white form before you stand,
And tremble to earth, beneath your stare?
No, no!--she is strong in her pureness now,
And Love to Power no more defers.
I fear the roses will never grow
On your lonely grave as they do on hers!
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