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S a youth John was an athlete. Between him and George Fox, of Andalusia, there existed that friendly rivalry in feats of strength and agility that urged them to take advantage of every opportunity for training their bodies in athletic exercise. Thus they reached a degree of perfection rarely attained by professional athletes, for the simple reason that the latter usually specialize and over-develop certain muscles at the expense of others. Nature had endowed these young men with unusual beauty of form which is rare among well-developed and strong men. Muscular development on a frame that is not built upon the graceful and conventional lines of the Greek model may express force without creating in the mind an emotion of beauty. Correctness of proportion in length of torso and limb is not even sufficient. The muscles must be formed and attached in the way they are found in the best specimens of Grecian sculpture, for the Greeks aimed at perfecting their bodies in beauty as much as or perhaps more than in strength.

The Greek sculptors, taking advantage of their opportunities of studying the figures of the best athletes, who were constantly exposed to their view undisfigured by the indecencies of dress, arrived at a rendering of the human figure, sometimes realistic, sometimes typical, which marks the place and the period of man's highest development.