GREAT MEN'S BODIES
"Ease makes children; it is difficulty that makes men. Many persons owe their good-fortune to some disadvantage under which they have labored, and it is in struggling against it that their best faculties are brought into play."
"A strong man breasts the tide; a great man turns it."
It may not be out of place to look at some of the world's greatest men; and see what kind of bodies they had; and if they did not aid them in reaching the lofty places.
The difference between great men and ordinary men is, in many ways, small. But it is there. Races are won by only a little; sometimes by a bare head. But a head is enough. A generation ago it was a fast horse that could pace or trot a mile in two minutes forty seconds. Now it is done in less than two minutes; and $125,000 has been paid for a horse of this class.
Then the Britannic crossed the Atlantic in seven days twelve hours. Now the Lucania or Campania finds five days and seven hours enough. The Britannic was 425 feet long; the Lucania is 629 feet.
The Oceanic is 704 feet. In five years, a hundred hours from New York to London, in a thousand-foot steamer; will no doubt be in order. The elements that make the horse, or steamship, or man win, are many. But they are known; and they are inevitable. Every horse-trainer, and ship-builder, and coach knows the folly of expecting a second-class horse, or ship, or man to keep up with a first-class one.
So in the deeds of great men; they will be found, generally—not always—to have had racing-bodies, as well as racing-heads; bodies that helped them to outstay other men; and to carry through great purposes where a weak man would have failed.
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