Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 19.djvu/25

Rh touches the ground. Now rise by straightening the left leg, with the right still extended horizontally, and without letting your hands or your right heel touch the ground. Then squat down as before, extend the left leg this time and rise on the right, and so on until the weight of the body has been raised twenty or thirty times by the effort of either knee-joint without the aid of the other. A moderate proficiency in this exercise will enable girls and city boys to walk up-hill for hours with the ease of a Tyrolese goat-herd.

In classifying gymnastics after the degree of their usefulness, a prominent place should be assigned to leaping, especially high leaping, an exercise which imparts a powerful stimulus to the digestive organs, and, combined with the shock of the descent, exerts an invigorating influence on the nervous system in general. The leaping-gauge of the Turner-hall consists of two upright posts with pegs and a cord stretched from post to post. Every peg is marked with a figure indicating the number of inches from the ground, and by raising or lowering the cord each gymnast can measure his jumping capacity and keep tally of his score in a certain number of leaps. Competition imparts to this sport an incentive which may be put to as good account in gymnastics as in mental exercises, and is certainly preferable to the only other method of stimulating the zeal of young pupils. Personal ambition, according to the ethics of a certain class of pedagogues, is inconsistent with the spirit of true Christian humility, and should be quelled rather than fomented; in dealing with unruly youngsters they have consequently to resort to the only alternative, slavish fear, enforced by punishments and espionage. For the nonce, that system answers its purpose quite as well as the emulation-method; as to future results, your choice must depend upon the main question of modern education, Are we to form men or canting sneaks?

A quadruped has an evident advantage over a biped jumper, but practice will do wonders. Leonardo da Vinci often astounded his visitors by jumping to the ceiling and knocking his feet against the bells of a glass chandelier, and a private soldier of Vandamme's cuirassiers even leaped over the tutelar deity of a brass fountain on the Frankfort market-square. But the champion jumper of modern times was Joe Ireland, a native of Beverley in Yorkshire. In his eighteenth year, "without any assistance, trick, or deception," he leaped over nine horses standing side by side and a man seated on the middle horse. He could clear a string held fourteen feet high, and once kicked a bladder hanging sixteen feet from the ground. In horizontal leaps our turners can not beat the record of antiquity: a Spartan once cleared fifty-two feet, and a native of Crotona even fifty-five. Nor would any modern filibusters be likely to emulate the trick of the Teuton freebooters who crossed the Alps during the consulate of Caius Marius: Finding the Roman battle-front inexpugnable, they