f the shells. After a few months of practice, I could,
with a jerk, raise the instrument from my shoulder to arm's-length above
my head. My first public exhibition of this feat took place in
Philadelphia, in April, 1860.

The spring of 1859 was now drawing nigh, and I began to think of giving a
public lecture on Physical Culture, illustrating it with some exhibitions
of the strength to which I had attained. My father approved the venture,
but, bethinking himself of my extreme diffidence, significantly asked,
_when_ I would be ready to permit a public announcement of my intention.
"Oh, in a few days," I replied, as if it were as small a matter for me to
lecture in public as to lift a thousand pounds in a gymnasium. Weeks flew
by, and still to the galling inquiry, "_When?_" I could only answer,
"Soon, but not just yet." February and March had come and gone, and still
I was not ready. Finally, to the oft-renewed interrogatory, I made this
reply: "As soon as I can shoulder a barrel of flour, a feat which I am
determined to accomplish before an audience, you may announce my lecture."

I had then been practising some two months with a loaded barrel, so
contrived that it should weigh a little more each succeeding day; and it
had now reached a hundred and ninety pounds. About this time it occurred
to me, that, among my many experiments, I had never fairly tried that of a
vegetable diet. I read anew the works of Graham and Alcott; and conceiving
that my strength had reached a stagnation-point, I gave up meat, and
restricted my animal diet to milk.

A barrel of flour weighs on an average two hundred and sixteen pounds. I
therefore could not succeed in shouldering one until twenty-six pounds had
been added to my loaded barrel. Day after day I shouldered my one hundred
and ninety pounds, but could not get an ounce beyond that limit. My grand
theory of the possible development of a man's strength began to look
somewhat insecure.

"So fares the system-building sage,
Who, plodding on from youth to age,
Has proved all other reasoners fools,
And bound all Nature by his rules,--
So fares he in that dreadful hour
When injured Truth exerts her power
Some new phenomenon to raise,
Which, bursting on his frighted gaze,
From its proud summit to the ground,
Proves the whole edifice unsound."
JAMES BEATTIE

The shouldering of a barrel of flour is a feat, by the way, which many an
old inhabitant wi