d a thousand pounds; though I doubt not, if they
had had my leisure for practice, they might have surpassed me.

In July, 1860, I commenced lifting by means of a padded rope over my
shoulders,--my body, during the act of lifting, being steadied and partly
supported by my hands grasping a stout frame at each side. After a few
unsuccessful preliminary trials, I quickly advanced to fourteen hundred
pounds. The stretching of the rope now proved so great an annoyance, that
I substituted for it a stout leather band of double thickness, about two
inches and a half wide, and which had been subjected to a process which
was calculated to render it proof against stretching more than half an
inch under any weight it was capable of sustaining. But on trial, I found,
almost to my despair, that it was of a far more yielding nature than the
rope, and consequently the rope was again brought into requisition. A few
weeks of unsatisfactory practice followed, when it occurred to me that an
iron chain, inasmuch as it could not stretch, might be advantageously
used, provided it could be so padded as not to chafe my shoulders. After
many experiments I succeeded in this substitution; but the chain had yet
one objection in common with the rope and the strap, arising from the
difficulty of getting it properly adjusted. I contented myself with its
use, however, until the spring of 1861, when I hit upon a contrivance
which has proved a complete success. It consists of a wooden yoke fitting
across my shoulders, and having two chains connected with it in such a
manner as to enable me to lift on every occasion to the most advantage.
With this contrivance my lifting-power has advanced with mathematical
certainty, slowly, but surely, to _two thousand and seven pounds_, up to
this twenty-third day of November, 1861.

In my public experiments in lifting, when I have not used the iron weights
cast for the purpose, I have, as a convenient substitute, used kegs of
nails. It recently occurred to me, that, if, instead of these kegs, I
could employ a number of men selected from the audience, the spectacle
would he still more satisfactory to the skeptical. Accordingly I contrived
an apparatus by means of which I have been able to present this convincing
proof of the actual weight lifted. I introduced it after my lecture at the
Town-Hall in Brighton, Massachusetts, on the 9th of October, 1861; and the
following account of the result appeared in one of the city pa