Page:Athletics and Manly Sport (1890).djvu/102

Rh recently completed in Boston, is pictured in the frontispiece of this book.

Look at the statue; that is Sullivan, life, body, and spirit. See the tremendous chest, filled with capacious lungs and a mighty heart, capable of pumping blood everywhere at once. See the marvellous trunk and the herculean arms, not twisted and hardened into foolish lumps of dry muscle, but soft and lissome as the leg of a tiger. See the ponderous fist and the massive wrist; and the legs and feet—ah! there you see the limbs of a perfect boxer—light as a dancer, firm as a tower. And then, look up to the buttressed, Samson neck, springing beautifully from the great shoulders; look at the head—large, round as a Greek's, broad-browed, wide-chinned, with a deep dimple, showing the good-nature, and a mouth and lips that ought be cut in granite, so full are they of doomful power and purpose.

And what an attitude! The advanced left foot hardly pressing the ground, the bones and muscles of the right leg straight and strong as a pillar. A position of repose, but the repose of the coiled steel spring. See the will and watchfulness of the pushed lower lip and level eye, and the slight forward inclination of the head. Above all, watch the arms, that appear to hang loosely at first sight. There is not a loose cord in them;