Page:How to Get Strong (1899).pdf/558

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HOW TO GET STRONG

call him—and Harry Buermeyer, founders of the New York Athletic Club more than a generation ago—and Buermeyer is fifty-nine and Curtis sixty-one—who rowed scores of races and took part in other athletic events before this present generation was born; Curtis rowing in more than one hundred and fifty races; in walking, jumping, throwing the hammer, skating, and swimming, taking part in over two hundred events; running more than two hundred and fifty races in all in more than six hundred contests;—let us see Greek or Roman of any age outside of war-time show such a score as that;—who, in a Chicago store, when some boxer was, or rather said he was, going to thrash him; caught him up lovingly in his arms, and threw him through the window into the laughing Chicago river just behind the house,—which closed the entertainment. Buermeyer, a kingly looking six-footer, with sixteen-inch arms, great shoulders, magnificent chest, square sides, and powerful legs; a modest, quiet, unassuming man, but a terror with the gloves—or without them—almost what the English fighter described Sullivan, when he saw him spar,—'a cat and a locomotive combined';—who to-day, each without training, would be very likely, in a glove-fight with either Corbett or Fitzsimmons, to give them the surprise of their lives. Just ask these grayheads—indeed Curtis does not show much gray yet—if athletes die young, and see their eyes light up! Catch hold of either for a fall,—and see if he does not throw you over his head!

Does this man opposite look to be sixty years old? Do you know many other men of that age who look as young? Do you see anything weak or feeble in that Julius Cæsar head? In that Joe Jefferson face? As manly a man, in his way, as the former; and as sweet

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