I need not inform those who have practised
the new series with the light dumb-bells that this objection is made
in ignorance. If you simply "put up" the light implement, it is true;
but if you use it as in the new system, it is not true. On the
contrary, in less than five minutes, legs, hips, back, arms,
shoulders, neck, lungs, and heart will each and all make the most
emphatic remonstrance against even a quarter of an hour's practice of
such feats.
At this point it may be urged that those exercises which quicken the
action of the thoracic viscera, to any considerable degree, are simply
exhaustive. This is another blunder of the "big-muscle" men. They seem
to think you can determine every man's constitution and health by the
tape-line; and that all exercises whose results are not determinable
by measurement are worthless.
I need scarcely say, there are certain conditions of brain, muscle,
and every other tissue, far more important than size; but what I
desire to urge more particularly in this connection is the importance,
the great physiological advantages, of just those exercises in which
the lungs and heart are brought into active play. These organs are no
exceptions to the law that exercise is the principal condition of
development.
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