r 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