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 Athenaeum were objects of my frequent
contemplation,--especially the Farnesian Hercules. From this I derived a
proper conception of the bodily outlin