Page:Athletics and Manly Sport (1890).djvu/161

136 this motion twenty times, thirty, on to fifty or sixty before you are tired.

Then stop,—always stop any exercise when it tires you: this is nature's advice.

But begin in a minute or so, and go over it again. You will probably this time reach seventy. Then change the motion: extend the arms like a cross, on a level with the shoulders, and double in from the elbow, alternately, just touching the tips of the shoulders with the hands. Keep this up till you are tired, and then go back to the first motion.

In a week you will be able to raise the hands in the first motion hundreds of times, in a few weeks a thousand times.

This means—what? It means that you keep the muscles of the arms working actively for from a quarter of an hour to an hour; that the lately dried-up blood-vessels are now full of warm blood, feeding the hot muscles as a trench full of water feeds a famished field. It means also that the girth of the arm is one, two, or more inches larger than it was a few weeks ago; that the flesh is firm and solid; and that arm, shoulder, and hand are so strong that there is a new pleasure even in swinging an umbrella or shaking hands with an old friend.

Proceed in the same way with the muscles of the