l and orderly fashion, the influences
under which human beings grow up, and the way in which to make the best
of the best of these influences, and to evade or neutralize the worst.
And if, after great thought and labor, I had produced such a volume, I
am well aware that nobody would read it. So I prefer to briefly glance
at a few aspects of a great subject just as they present themselves,
leaving the complete discussion of it to solid individuals with more
leisure at their command.

* * * * *

Physically, no man is made the most of. Look at an acrobat or a boxer:
_there_ is what your limbs might have been made for strength and
agility: _that_ is the potential which is in human nature in these
respects. I never witnessed a prize-fight, and assuredly I never will
witness one: but I am told, that, when the champions appear in the ring,
stripped for the combat, (however bestial and blackguard-looking their
countenances may be,) the clearness and beauty of their skin testify
that by skilful physical discipline a great deal more may be made of
that human hide than is usually made of it. Then, if you wish to see
what may be made of the human muscles as regards rapid dexterity, look
at the Wizard of the North or at an Indian juggler. I am very far,
indeed, from saying or thinking that this peculiar preeminence is worth
the pains it must cost to acquire it. Not that I have a word to say
against the man who maintains his children by bringing some one faculty
of the body to absolute perfection: I am ready even to admit that it is
a very right and fit thing that one man in five or six millions should
devote his life to showing the very utmost that can be made of the human
fingers, or the human muscular system as a whole. It is fit that a rare
man here and there should cultivate some accomplishment to a perfection
that looks magical, just as it is fit that a man here and there should
live in a house that cost a million of pounds to build, and round which
a wide tract of country shows what may be made of trees and fields where
unlimited wealth and exquisite taste have done their best to improve
Nature to the fairest forms of which it is capable. But even if it were
possible, it would not be desirable that all human beings should live in
dwellings like Hamilton Palace or Arundel Castle; and it would serve no
good end at all, certainly no end worth the cost, to have all educated
men muscular as Tom Sayer