Page:How to Get Strong (1899).pdf/565

 annually to half a million of hearers—good lectures too. But these do not include the great men in the field, the Stanleys, and Maclarens, and Nansens; the "Tom" Reeds, Edisons, and Bourke Cockrans, the best of both continents; and men and women in moderate or small circumstances would enjoy and profit by hearing these even more than do the wealthy; and such lectures published afterwards—the Carnegie course—would have a permanent value.

And now what more tools do you want? You have more than Franklin had; more than Washington had; more, far more, than Abraham Lincoln had. How they would have welcomed such a chance for self-improvement as this! Or your running-track can be on the road near by. And one thing more you do want and can all have—a good bit of turf Which, as Milton says (see page 291), is the likeliest means to make men grow large, tall, and to inspire them with a gallant and fearless courage. Washington had no time to wrestle during working-hours. That made no difference; he found time afterwards. So did Lincoln;—and so can you. If, as the ancients believed and found, "a well-framed and exercised body assured sound sense and right judgment"—and will you name any man richer in sound sense and right judgment than Washington or Lincoln—if, as Beecher so well put it—and he could put anything well—"learning in a broken body is like artillery without a