Kitabı oku: «The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862», sayfa 14
On the morning of our departure, I looked from the parlor-window of the Peacock into the market-place, and beheld its irregular square already well-covered with booths, and more in process of being put up, by stretching tattered sail-cloth on poles. It was market-day. The dealers were arranging their commodities, consisting chiefly of vegetables, the great bulk of which seemed to be cabbages. Later in the forenoon there was a much greater variety of merchandise: basket-work, both for fancy and use; twig-brooms, beehives, oranges, rustic attire; all sorts of things, in short, that are commonly sold at a rural fair. I heard the lowing of cattle, too, and the bleating of sheep, and found that there was a market for cows, oxen, and pigs, in another part of the town. A crowd of towns-people and Lincolnshire yeomen elbowed one another in the square; Mr. Punch was squeaking in one corner, and a vagabond juggler tried to find space for his exhibition in another: so that my final glimpse of Boston was calculated to leave a livelier impression than my former ones. Meanwhile the tower of Saint Botolph’s looked benignantly down; and I fancied that it was bidding me farewell, as it did Mr. Cotton, two or three hundred years ago, and telling me to describe its venerable height, and the town beneath it, to the people of the American city, who are partly akin, if not to the living inhabitants of Old Boston, yet to some of the dust that lies in its churchyard.
One thing more. They have a Bunker Hill in the vicinity of their town; and (what could hardly be expected of an English community) seem proud to think that their neighborhood has given name to our first and most widely celebrated and best-remembered battle-field.
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES OF A STRENGTH-SEEKER
“There goes the smallest fellow in our class.”
I was crossing one of the paths that intersect the college green of old Harvard when this remark fell upon my ears. Looking up, I saw two stalwart Freshmen on their way to recitation, one of whom had called the other’s attention to my humble self by this observation, reminding me of a distinction which I did not covet.
It was not quite true. There was one, and only one, member of the class of ‘54 who was as small as I. Some consolation, though not much, in that! But the air of amused compassion with which the lusty Down-Easter, who had made me feel what the digito monstrari was, now looked down on me, raised a feeling of resentment and self-depreciation which left me in no mood to make a brilliant show of scholarship in construing my “Isocrates” that morning.
“True, I am small, nay, diminutive,” I soliloquized, as I wended my way homeward under the classic umbrage of venerable elms. “But surely this is no fault of mine.—Hold there! Are you quite sure it’s no fault of yours? Are we not responsible to a much greater extent than we imagine for our physical condition? After making all abatement for insurmountable hereditary influences upon organization,—after granting to that remorseless law of genealogical transmission its proper weight,—after admitting the seemingly capricious facts of what the modern French physiologists call atavism, under which we are made drunkards or consumptives, lunatics or wise men, short or tall, because of certain dominant traits in some remote ancestor,—after conceding all this, does not Nature leave it largely in our own power to counteract both physical and moral tendencies, and to mould the body as well as the mind, if we will only put forth in action the requisite energy of will?”
This disposition to cavil at received axioms has beset me through life. No sooner does a truth present itself than I want to see it on its other side. If I hear the Devil spoken ill of, I puzzle myself to find what can be said in his favor. The man who thus halts between conflicting opinions, solicitous to give both their due, and to see the truth, pure and simple and entire, may miss laying hold of great convictions till it is too late for him to act on them; but what he accepts he generally holds.
My meditations on the subject of my inferior stature led me to a determination to try what gymnastic practice could do to remedy the defect. For some thirty years, gymnastics, first introduced into this country, I believe, at the Round-Hill School at Northampton, then under the charge of Messrs. Cogswell and Bancroft, had languished and revived fitfully at Cambridge. It was during one of the languishing periods that I began my practice. For some five or six weeks I kept it up with enthusiasm. Then I began to grow less methodical and regular in my habits of exercise; and then to find excuses for my delinquencies.
After all, what matter, if, like Paul’s, my “bodily presence is weak”? Were not Alexander the Great and Napoleon small men? Were not Pope, and Dr. Watts, and Moore, and Campbell, and a long list of authors, artists, and philosophers, considerably under medium height? Were not Garrick and Kean and the elder Booth all under five feet four or five? Is there not a volume somewhere in our college library, written by a learned Frenchman, devoted exclusively to the biography of men who have been great in mind, though diminutive in stature? Is not Lord John Russell as small almost as I? Have I many inches to grow before I shall be as tall as Dr. Holmes?
These consolatory considerations softened my chagrin at the contemplation of my height. “Care I for the limb, the thews, the stature, bulk, and big assemblance of a man? Give me the spirit, Master Shallow,—the spirit!”
And so my gymnastic ardor, after a brief blaze, flickered, fell, was ashes. But it was destined to be soon revived by an incident, trifling in itself, though of a character to assume exaggerated proportions in the mind of a sensitive boy. A youth, who had considerably the advantage of me both in inches and in years, and whose overflow of animal spirits required some object to vent itself upon, selected me as the victim of his ebullient vivacity. He began by tossing my book down stairs. This seemed to me rather rough play, especially from one with whom I was not, at the time, on terms of intimacy; but, making allowance for the hilarity of classmates just let loose from recitation, I picked up, without a thought of resentment, the abused volume, and took no further notice of the matter. I subsequently found that it was merely the commencement of a series of similar annoyances. This lively classmate would even play tricks on me at the dinner table.
What was to be done? I mentioned the grievance to a friend, and he remonstrated with my lively classmate, threatening him with my serious displeasure. “Pooh! how can he help himself?” was the reply which came duly to my ears.
Sure enough! How could I help myself? The aggressor was my superior in weight and size. It was a plain case that I should get badly and ridiculously whipped, if I attempted to cope with him in any pugilistic encounter. But how would it do to demand of him the satisfaction of a gentleman? True, I knew nothing of pistol-shooting, and had never handled a small-sword. No matter for that!
But another consideration speedily drove this scheme of vengeance à l’outrance out of my head. Not many years before, a peppery little Freshman had been insulted, as he thought, by a Sophomore. The Soph, I believe, had knocked the young one’s hat over his eyes, as they were kicking foot-ball in the Delta. Freshman sent a challenge, the effect of which was to excite inextinguishable laughter among the Sophs convened over their cigars in the aggressor’s room. Amid roars, one of the conspirators penned an acceptance, fixing as the weapon, hair triggers,—time, five o’clock in the morning,—place, the Delta,—second, the bearer, Mr. M–, the writer of this reply.
It was a cruel business. A sham second was imposed on poor little Fresh. Brave as Julius Caesar, he sat up all night writing letters and preparing his will. Prompt to the moment, he was on the chosen ground. An unusually large delegation for such a delicate affair seemed to be present. One rascal who wore enormous green goggles was pointed out to the innocent as Dr. Von Guldenstubbe, a celebrated German surgeon, just from Leipsic. Little Fresh shook hands with him gravely, amid the smothered laughter of the conspirators. The distance was to be five paces; for it was whispered so as to reach the ear of Fresh, that Soph was thirsting for his heart’s blood. They take their places,—the signal is given,—they fire,—and with a hideous groan and a wild pirouette, the Soph falls to the ground.
The Freshman is led up near enough to see the fellow’s face covered with blood, and to hear his cries to his friends to put him out of his misery. Intensely agitated, poor little Fresh is hurried by pretended friends into a carriage, and driven off; and it is not till a week afterwards that he learns he has been the victim of a hoax.
No! it would never answer for me to run the risk of being sold in any such way as this. I must select a surer and more practical vengeance. I thought the matter over intently, and finally resolved that I would put myself on a physical equality with my persecutor, and then meet him in a fair fight with such weapons as Nature had given us both. I accordingly said to the friend and classmate who had played the part of intercessor, “Wait two years, and I promise you I will either make my tormentor apologize or give him such a thrashing as he will remember for the rest of his life.”
Thus was my resolve renewed to accomplish myself as a gymnast, and, above all, to develop my physical strength. My previous attempts in the gymnasium had been spasmodic and irregular. Having now a definite object in view, I set about my work in earnest, and went through a daily systematic practice of a little more than an hour’s duration.
The gymnasium was kept by a Mr. Law, and, though ordinary in its accommodations, had a good arrangement of apparatus, of which I faithfully availed myself. The spring-board, horse, vaulting-apparatus, parallel bars, suspended rings, horizontal and inclined ladders, pulley-weights, pegs, climbing-rope, trapezoid, etc., were all put in frequent requisition. My time for exercise was generally in the evening, when I would find myself almost alone,—while the clicking of balls from the billiard-rooms and bowling-alleys down-stairs announced that a busy crowd—if amusement may be called a business—were there assembled.
Naturally indolent, it was not without a severe struggle that I overcame a besetting propensity to confine myself to sedentary pursuits. The desire of retaliation soon became extinct. My pledge to my friend and sympathizer, that in two years I would cry quittance to my foe, would occasionally act as a spur in the side of my intent; but my two best aids in supplying me with the motive power to keep up my gymnastic practice were habit and progress. What will not habit make easy to us, whether it be for good or for evil? And what an incentive we have to renewed effort in finding that we are making actual progress,—that we can do with comparative facility to-day what we could do only with difficulty yesterday!
Two years, while we are yet on the sunny side of twenty, are no trifle; but for two years I persistently and methodically went through the exercises of the gymnasium. At the end of that time I had quite lost sight of my original object in cultivating my athletic powers; for all annoyances towards me had long since been dropped by my old enemy. But punctually on the day of expiration, the friend who had listened to my pledge came to me and claimed its fulfilment. From some evidences which he had recently had of my strength he felt a soothing assurance that I should have no difficulty in making good my promise.
I accordingly called on the lively young gentleman who two years before had indulged in those little frolics at my expense. With diplomatic ceremony and circumlocution I introduced the object of my visit, and wound up with an ultimatum to this effect: There must either be a frank apology for past indignities, or he must accompany me, each with a friend, to some suitable spot, and there decide which was “the better man.”
If he had been called on to expiate an offence committed before he was breeched, the young gentleman could not have been more astounded. Two years had made some change in our relative positions. I was now about his equal in size, and felt a comfortable sense of my superiority, so far as strength was concerned. My shoulders had broadened, and my muscles been developed, so as to present to the critical and interested observer a somewhat threatening appearance. Mr. – (who, by the way, was a good fellow in the main) protested that he had never intended to give me any offence,—that he, in fact, did not remember the circumstances to which I referred,—and finished by peremptorily declining my proposal. When I reflected on the disparity between us in strength, which my two years’ practice had established, I felt that it would be cowardly for me to urge the matter further, especially as it was so long a time since he had given me cause of complaint. I have only to add, that we parted without a collision, and that, in my heart, I could not help thanking him for the service he had rendered in inciting me to the regimen which had resulted so beneficially to my health.
The impetus given to my gymnastic education by the little incident I have just related was continued without abatement through my whole college life. Gradually I acquired the reputation of being the strongest man in my class. I discovered that with every day’s development of my strength there was an increase of my ability to resist and overcome all fleshly ailments, pains, and infirmities,—a discovery which subsequent experience has so amply confirmed, that, if I were called on to condense the proposition which sums it up into a formula, it would be in these words: Strength is Health.
Until I had renovated my bodily system by a faithful gymnastic training, I had been subject to nervousness, headache, indigestion, rush of blood to the head, and a weak circulation. It was torture to me to have to listen to the grating of a slate-pencil, the filing of a saw, or the scratching of glass. As I grew in strength, my nerves ceased to be impressible to such annoyances. Another good effect was to take away all appetite for any stimulating food or drink. Although I had never applied “rebellious liquors” to my blood, I had been in the habit of taking a bowl of strong coffee morning and night. Now a craving for milk took the place of this want, and my coffee was gradually diminished to less than a fourth of what had been a customary indulgence.
At last arrived the eagerly looked-for day of release from collegiate restrictions and labors. I graduated, and the question, so momentous in the history of all adolescents, “What shall I be?” addressed itself seriously to my mind. My father was desirous that I should choose medicine for a profession, and become the fourth physician, in lineal sequence, of my family on the paternal side.
Medicine. I cavilled at it awhile, that I might bring out to view its grimmest and most discouraging aspect The cares, trials, humiliations of a young physician, his months and years of uncompensated drudgery, passed in awful review before me. I thought of his toils among the poor and lowly, the vicious and depraved,—of his broken sleep,—the interruptions of his social ease,—and then of the many scenes so repugnant to delicate nerves which he has to pass through,—scenes of pain and insanity, of maimed and severed limbs, and all the eccentricities and fearful forms of disease. These considerations pressed with such weight on my mind that for a time my ancestral craft was in danger of being ignominiously rejected by me. Indeed, I began to think seriously of adopting a very different vocation. And here I will make a confession, if the gentle reader will take it confidentially.
It is a familiar fact, that every college-boy has to pass through an attack of the rhyming frenzy as regularly as the child has to submit to measles and the whooping-cough. A less frequent, but not less trying complaint, is that which manifests itself in a passion for the stage and in an espousal of the delusion that one was born for a great actor. At any rate, this last was the type which my juvenile malaise-du-coeur finally assumed.
I have heard of a young gentleman who, whenever he was hard up for money, went to his nearest relatives and threatened them with the publication of a volume of his original poems. This threat never failed to open the paternal purse. I do not know what effect the intimation of my histrionic aspirations would have had; but one fine day I found myself on my way to Rochester, in the State of New York.
My rôle of dramatic characters was a very modest one for a beginner. It embraced only Richelieu, Bertram, Brutus, Lear, Richard, Shylock, Sir Giles Overreach, Hamlet, Othello, and Macbeth. My principal literary recreation for several years had been in studying these parts; and as I knew them by heart, I did not doubt that a few rehearsals would put me in possession of the requisite stage-business. And yet my familiarity with the theatre was very limited. I had never been behind the scenes. Once, with a classmate, I had penetrated in the daytime to the stage of the old Federal-Street Theatre, and looked with awe on the boards formerly trodden by the elder Kean; but a growl from that august functionary, the prompter, sent us back in quick retreat, and I had never ventured again into those sacred precincts.
Arrived at Rochester,—which place I had selected for my début because of its remoteness from home,—I looked in, the evening of my arrival, to see the performances at the theatre. It was a hall of humble dimensions, seating an audience of five or six hundred. The piece was a travesty of “Hamlet,” neither edifying nor amusing. A little of the couleur-de-rose which had flushed my prospect faded that night; but the few friends at home to whom I had confided my plans had so pertinaciously assured me that I—the most diffident man in the world—could never appear before an audience without letting them see I was shaky in the knees, that I resolved to do what I could to show my depreciators they were false prophets.
And so I called on the manager,—with a beating heart, as you may suppose. He was a small, quiet, gentlemanly person, whom I regret I cannot, consistently with historical truth, show up as a Crummles. But not even Dickens could have found any salient trait for ridicule in the man. Frankly and kindly he went into the statistics of the theatrical business, and showed me, that, unless I was rich, and could afford to play for my own amusement, the stage held out few inducements; it was barren of promise to a young man anxious to make himself independent of the world.
I did not reply, “Perish the lucre!” but said that I would be content, in the early part of my career, to labor for reputation. He soon satisfied me that he could not give up his stage to an experimentalist, and I did not urge my suit; but bade Mr. S. good morning, and, a day or two afterwards, started for Niagara. Here, wet by the mist and listening to the roar of the great cataract, I speedily forgot my chagrin, and took a not unfriendly leave of the illusions which had lured me on to try my fortune on the stage. Even now they return occasionally with all their fascination.
While at Rochester, as I was passing through the principal street, I met a crowd assembled about a lifting-machine. On making trial of it, I found I could lift four hundred and twenty pounds. I had then been for four years a gymnast, and I supposed my practice would have qualified me to make the crowd stare at my achievement. But the result was far from triumphant. I found what many other gymnasts will find, that main strength, by which I mean the strength of the truckman and the porter, cannot be acquired in the ordinary exercises of the gymnasium.
Returning home, I began the study of anatomy and physiology, and in the autumn of 1854 entered the Harvard Medical School. The question of the extent to which human strength can be developed had long been invested with a scientific interest to my mind. One of the greatest lifting feats on authentic record is that of Thomas Topham, an Englishman, who in Bath Street, Cold Bath Fields, London, on the 28th of May, 1741, lifted three hogsheads of water, said to weigh, with the connections, eighteen hundred and thirty-six pounds. In the performance of this feat, Topham stood on a raised platform, his hands grasping a fixture on either side, and a broad strap over his shoulders communicating with the weight. An immense concourse of persons was assembled on the occasion,—the performance having been announced as “in honor of Admiral Vernon,” or rather, “in commemoration of his taking Porto Bello with six ships only.” Being a descendant myself from the Vernon family of Haddon Hall, Derbyshire, England, I have reserved it for future genealogical inquiry to learn whether the Admiral was connected with that branch of the Vernons. If so, a somewhat remarkable coincidence is involved.
I now informed my father that I intended to go through a series of experiments in lifting. He was afraid I should injure myself, and expressly forbade any such practice on his premises. To gratify him, I gave up testing the question for a whole year.
But the desire re-awoke, and I had frequent arguments with my father in the endeavor to overcome his objections.
“Look at that man,” he said to me one day,—pointing to a large, stout individual in front of us,—“you might practise lifting all your life, and never be able to lift as much as that big fellow.”
“Let me construct a lifting-apparatus in the back-yard, and I will soon prove to you that you are mistaken,” I replied.
Finding that I was bent on the experiment, he at length gave a reluctant consent.
It was now the August of 1855, and I was in my twenty-second year. My first lifting-apparatus was constructed in the following manner. I first sank into the ground a hogshead, and into the hogshead a flour-barrel. Then I lowered to the bottom of the barrel a rope having at the end a round stick transversely balanced, about four inches in diameter and fifteen inches long. A quantity of gravel, nearly sufficient to bury the stick, was then thrown into the barrel; some oblong stones were placed across the stick and across and between one another, and the interstices filled with smaller stones and gravel. When I had by this method about two-thirds filled the barrel, taking care to keep the axis of the rope in correspondence with the long axis of the barrel, I judged I had a sufficient weight for a first trial. I now formed a loop in the end of the rope over the top of the barrel, and put through it a piece of a hoe-handle, about two feet long; and standing astride of the hogshead, and holding the handle with one hand before me and the other behind,—straightening my body, previously a little flexed,—with mouth closed, head up, chest out, and shoulders down,—I succeeded in lifting the barrel, containing a weight of between four and five hundred pounds, some five or six inches from the bottom of the hogshead.
It was no great feat, after all, considering that I had been for five years a gymnast. I found that I was inharmoniously developed in many points of my frame,—was perilously weak in the sides, between the shoulders, and at the back of the head. However, the day after this trial, I succeeded in lifting the same weight with somewhat less difficulty. This induced me to add on a few pounds; and in three or four weeks I could lift between six and seven hundred. I now had the satisfaction of seeing the stout gentleman, whom a few months before my father had pointed out as possessed of a strength I could never attain to, introduced to an inspection of my apparatus. Through the blinds of a back-parlor window I watched his movements, as, encouraged by pater-familias, he drew off his coat, moistened his hands, and undertook to “snake up” the big weight. An ignominious failure to start the barrel was the result. The stout gentleman tugged till he was so red in the face that apoplexy seemed imminent, and then he dejectedly gave it up. The reputation he had long enjoyed of being one of the “strongest men about” must henceforth be a thing of the past till it fades into a myth.
In the December of 1855 I was admitted to the arcana of the dissecting-room, and forthwith commenced some experiments with the view of testing the sustaining power of human bones. Some one had told me, that, in lifting a heavy weight, there was danger of fracturing the neck of the thigh-bone; but my experiments satisfied me, that, if properly positioned, it would safely bear a strain of two or three thousand pounds. And so I concluded that I might securely continue my practice of lifting till I reached the last-named limit.
In order to get all possible hints from the inspiration and experience of the past, I studied some of the ancient statues. The specimens of Grecian statuary at the Boston Athenæum were objects of my frequent contemplation,—especially the Farnesian Hercules. From this I derived a proper conception of the bodily outline compatible with the exercise of the greatest amount of strength. I was particularly struck by the absence of all exaggeration in the muscular developments as represented. I saw by this statue that a Hercules must be free from superfluous flesh, neatly made, and finely organized,—that form and quality were of more account than quantity in his formation. Some years earlier I might have been more attracted by the Apollo Belvedere; but it was a Hercules I dreamed of becoming, and the Apollo was but the incipient and potential Hercules. Two other statues that shared my admiration and study were the Quoit-Thrower and the Dying Gladiator. From the careful inspection of all these relics of ancient Art I obtained some valuable hints as to my own physical deficiencies. I learned that the upper region of my chest needed developing, and that in other points I had not yet reached the artist’s ideal of a strong man.
Good casts of these and other masterpieces in statuary may be had at a trifling cost. Why are they not generally introduced into the gymnasia attached to our colleges and schools? The habitual contemplation of such works could not fail to have a good effect upon the physical bearing and development of the young. We are the creatures of imitation. I remember, at the school I attended in my seventh year, the strongest boy among my mates was quite round-shouldered. Fancying that he derived his strength from his stoop, I began to imitate him; and it was not till I learned that he was strong in spite of his round shoulders, and not because of them, that I gave up aping his peculiarity.
On the 29th of January, 1856, I lifted seven hundred pounds in Bailey’s Gymnasium, Franklin Street, Boston. The exhibition created great surprise among the lookers-on; and at that time it was, perhaps, an extraordinary feat; but since the extension and growth of the lifting mania, it would not be regarded by the knowing ones as anything to marvel at. The fourth of April following, my lifting capacity had reached eight hundred and forty pounds.
On Fast-Day of that year, two Irishmen knocked at my door and asked to see the strong man. I presented myself, and they told me there was great curiosity among the “ould counthrymen” in the vicinity to ascertain if one Pat Farren, the strongest Irishman in Roxbury, could lift my weight. “Would it be convanient for me to let him thry?” “Certainly,—and I think he’ll lift it,” I modestly added.
Soon afterwards a delegation of Irishmen, rather startling from its numbers, entered the yard. Among them was Mr. Farren. They surrounded my lifting-apparatus, while I, unseen, surveyed them from a back window. I saw Mr. Farren take the handle, straddle the hogshead, throw himself into a lifting posture, and, straining every muscle to its utmost tension, give a tremendous pull. But the weight made no sign; and his friends, thinking he was merely feeling it, said, “Wait a bit,—Pat’ll have it up the next pull.” Mr. Farren rested a moment,—then threw off his coat, rubbed his hands, and, seizing the handle a second time, tugged away at it till his muscles swelled and his frame quivered. But he failed in starting the barrel, and a burst of laughter from his friends and backers announced his defeat.
It is now but justice to Mr. Farren to say that it could hardly be expected of him to lift such a weight at either the first trial or the second. A want of confidence, or the maladjustment of the rope, might have interfered with the full exercise of his strength. I need not say that his discomfiture was witnessed by me from my hiding-place with the liveliest satisfaction; for I had begun to pride myself on being able to outlift any man in the country.
In May, 1856, I received the appointment of medical assistant to Dr. Walker, at the Lunatic Hospital, South Boston, and gave up for a couple of months my practice of lifting. The consequence was a rapid diminution of strength, which suggested to me a return to the lifting exercise. Near the hospital was a large unoccupied building, formerly the House of Industry. In the cellar of this building I put a barrel, and loaded it with rocks and gravel as I had done in Roxbury. Immediately overhead, on the first floor, I cut a hole, about six inches square, and passed up a rope attached to the barrel. This rope I looped at the end, for the reception of a handle. On the floor I nailed two cleats between three and four feet apart, as guards to keep my feet from slipping. Beginning with about six hundred pounds, I added a few pounds daily, till I was able, in November, 1856, to lift with my hands alone nine hundred pounds.
