Page:Athletics and Manly Sport (1890).djvu/23

xvi put it on his arms, trunk, and legs in the shape of firm muscle, and, other things being equal, you improve his moral as well as his bodily health.

All who are trained in athletics know the value of the "second wind." Powerful athletes are in danger till this is reached; but he who has obtained his "second wind" in a contest can go on as long as his muscular power lasts. It is worth remembering that there is a moral as well as a physical "second wind;" and that many who go down at the first trials would have held on to a virtuous and happy end had the failing character been sustained at the period of early weakness.

Fatness and softness are merely sensuous expressions, or symptoms of disease. They are non-conductors of spiritual messages, stopping or deadening the finer currents of enjoyment, as an insulator stops electricity.

The motive-centre of a thinker is the brain; of a philanthropist, the heart; of a sensualist the belly. In the latter class, a kindly or beautiful or devotional aspiration enters the mind and wanders aimlessly through the flabby muscles, straying off the nerve at will, for the tissues have not sufficient consistency to hold it on the line, until it sinks gradually but surely toward the marshy and forbidden wastes of