[p.1]HOW TO GET STRONG
AND
HOW TO STAY SO
BY
WILLIAM BLAIKIE
NEW YORK
HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS
FRANKLIN SQUARE
1883.
[p.2]Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1879, by
HARPER & BROTHERS,
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.
ARCHIBALD MACLAREN
WHO HAS PROBABLY DONE MORE THAN ANY ONE ELSE NOWLIVING TO POINT OUT THE BENEFITS RESULTINGFROM RATIONAL PHYSICAL EXERCISE, ANDHOW TO ATTAIN THOSE BENEFITS
THIS BOOK IS RESPECTFULLY
Dedicated
[p.5]PREFACE.
Millions of our people pass their lives in cities and towns, and at workwhich keeps them nearly all day in-doors. Many hours are devoted fordays and years, under careful teachers, and many millions of dollars arespent annually, in educating the mind and the moral nature. But the bodyis allowed to grow up all uneducated; indeed, often such a weak, shakyaffair that it gets easily out of order, especially in middle and laterlife, and its owner is wholly unequal to tasks which would have provedeasy to him, had he given it even a tithe of the education bestowed sogenerously in other directions. Not a few, to be sure, have theadvantage in youth of years of active out-door life on a farm, and solay up a store of vigor which stands them in good stead throughout alifetime. But many, and especially those born and reared in towns andcities, have had no such training, or any equivalent, and so never havethe developed lungs and muscles, the strong heart and vigorousdigestion—in short, the improved tone and strength in [p.6]all theirvital organs—which any sensible plan of body-culture, followed updaily, would have secured. It does not matter so much whether we getvigor on the farm, the deck, the tow-path, or in the gymnasium, if weonly get it. Fortunately, if not gotten in youth, when we are plasticand easily shaped, it may still be had, even far on in middle life, byjudicious and systematic exercise, aimed first to bring up the weak andunused parts, and then by general work daily which shall maintain theequal development of the whole.
The aim here has been, not to write a profound treatise on gymnastics,and point out how to eventually reach great performance in this art, butrather in a way so plain and untechnical that even any intelligent boyor girl can readily understand it, to first give the reader a nudge totake better care of his body, and so of his health, and then to pointout one way to do it. That there are a hundred other ways is cheerfullyconceded. If anything said here should stir up some to vigorously takehold of, and faithfully follow up, either the plan here indicated or anyone of these others, it cannot fail to bring them