HOW TO GET STRONG
Washington would not, by sundown, have left him miles behind. For he not only equalled, "he excelled the hunter and the woodman in their athletic habits."
"He looked like no one else; rather spare than full; lofty and commanding"; he said himself that the best weight of his best days was between two hundred and ten and two hundred and twenty pounds; indeed, he once wrote his step-brother Lawrence: "Without a pound of superfluous flesh, I weigh two hundred and thirteen pounds"; and one artist, who saw him stripped to the waist, says: "He was literally thews and sinews; in the prime of his life he stood six feet two inches; broad and athletic, with very large limbs."
With a hand of fabulous size; his powers chiefly in his limbs, which were very large and sinewy; and so superb a horseman that a celebrated riding-master said that he would go to Washington to learn to ride. The range of athletic contests in his day, while narrower than now, included searching tests; the one of a man's agility, the other of his strength and lasting power—namely, jumping[1] and wrestling; and in each of these Washington was king.
- ↑ The following is taken from the New York Daily News, June 8, 1894:
"A WASHINGTON LEGEND
"how the father of his country came to make his famous jump
"In your last Sunday's Courier, on the editorial page, you refer in a short article to having heard about George Washington jumping, and you also state that you 'have not been able to find any evidence of the accuracy' of the story. The writer, when a boy, read a historical article about the jump that George Washington made when he was a young man, and the story is as follows, as the writer now remembers it: "It was during the French and Indian War. Washington was
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