Page:How to Get Strong (1899).pdf/74

 always breathing through the nose—long breaths too. They will be astonished at the very gratifying difference in the result between it and the old listless walk; and how much easier the day's duties come now.

But there is one class of women who are especially favored—a large class too, in our land—the daughters of parents so well to do that, between their graduation from school and the day they are married, their time is practically their own. If weak at the start, let them, after gradual exercise begins to make them stronger, take more besides the few minutes at rising and retiring; and the hearty constitutional afoot. If their walking is done in the afternoon, let them set apart half an hour in the latter part of the morning (if possible, with another girl similarly placed) for work which shall strengthen the arms and the whole trunk. If there is a good gymnasium convenient—especially if it has a teacher of the right stamp—there will be the best place for this work. But if not, a little home-exerciser (see Fig. 4), and which every girl ought to have, will be all she will need. Very soon this extra work will tell. Look what the four hours a week, just with two-pound wooden dumb-bells, very light Indian clubs, and light pulley-weights, did for a youth of nineteen in one year! And the same time spent with the exerciser would have done as much—indeed more for him. Two well-known society leaders in New York—one the wife of one of the wealthiest men in the world—are said to use one of these exercisers half an hour each day for the health, strength, and grace it brings. And they are so cheap that all but the very poor can own one as readily as the rich. An increase of an inch in height; of one