HOW TO GET STRONG
ing stride of from 34 inches to 40. Not yet a large arm, save below the elbow, not yet a great chest; five inches smaller, for instance, than Daniel Webster's; but greatly ahead of what they were a year earlier. There is no mystery about the Maclaren method. Others might do it, perhaps not as well as he, for Maclaren's has been a very exceptional experience; still, well enough.
Look what Sargent did with a student of nineteen, as shown in Appendix IV. In four hours' work a week this student's upper arm went up 1½ inches—just the same amount as did Maclaren's student of twenty; his chest went up from 36½ inches to 40, while that of Maclaren's man went from 34 to 40; but it should be borne in mind that 36½, is harder to add 6 inches to in this kind of work than 34. In height the Englishman made three-eighths of an inch in the year; while the American made a whole inch. But the latter also led easily in another direction, and a very important one too; for, while the Briton, though but a year older, and of almost exactly the same height, gained but 8½ pounds in the year, the American made 15! His case is further valuable in that it shows, beside this advance above the waist, splendid increase in girth of hips, thigh, and calf as well. And in one instance of which we knew a five-foot-eleven youth of nineteen, in half an hour's run at an easy gait each secular evening for a month, put 2¼ inches on his thigh girth.
With us Americans fond of results, many of whose chests, by the way, do not increase a hair's-breadth in twenty years, better proof could not be sought than these figures offer of the value of a system of exercise which would work such rapid and decided changes. Had they all been with boys, there might have been difficulty in separating what natural growth did, in the
140
