Page:Athletics and Manly Sport (1890).djvu/176

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FOR CITY DWELLERS AND CHILDREN.
151

your weakling. What he loses in stamina, he is sure to make up in gab. He will prate correction, but do none, either for himself or others. He will preach labors and sacrifices he is afraid and unable to practise. He will run not only to head, but to the sensual centres. Your big-chested, bright-eyed, large-shouldered athlete is never a vile sensualist. It is always your pot-bellied, purple-fleshed, dew-lapped, soft-handed creature, on the one hand, or your pallid, tremulous, watery-eyed specimen on the other.

The only use in such men and women is to manure the earth, to hold a warning up to history, and to be pushed out of the path of the strong races, whom they tempt by their luxury to become their conquerors and successors.

To make the future American all he ought to be, physically, mentally, and spiritually, we must build gymnasiums as well as schools and churches. We must honor the teaching of health and strength and beauty, as the Greeks did, as well as the teaching of books and sciences. We must cover our incomparable rivers and lakes with canoes and light outrigged boats, as we are covering our bays with white-sailed yachts. We must see that every square fifty yards of clear ice in winter is covered with merry skaters (the best of all exercises for developing grace); and that the vile rinks for