ory
result. This false notion of dignity has since then, by keeping men
out of flannels, gymnasium suits, running-tights, and overalls,
performed prodigies in the work of blighting the flowers of the mind
and stunting the fruit trees of the spirit.

To-day, however, we are escaping from the old superstition. We begin
to see that there is no complete dignity for man without a dignified
physique; and that there is no physical dignity to compare with that
of the hard-trained athlete. True, he who trains can hardly keep up
the old-time pose of the grand old man or the grand young man. He must
perforce be more human and natural. But this sort of grandeur is now
going out of fashion. And its absence must show to advantage in his
work.

As a rule the true artist is a most devoted and self-sacrificing
person. Ever since the piping times of Pericles he has usually been
willing to sacrifice to the demands of his art most of the things he
enjoys excepting poor health. Wife, children, friends, credit--all may
go by the board. But his poor health he addresses with solemn,
scriptural loyalty: "Whither thou goest I will go: and where thou
lodgest I will lodge. Where thou diest, will I die, and there will I
be buried." Not that he enjoys the misery incidental to poor health.
But he most thoroughly enjoys a number of its causes. Sitting up too
late at night is what he enjoys; smoking too much, drinking too much,
yielding to the exhausting sway of the divine efflatus for longer
hours at a time than he has any business to, bolting unbalanced meals,
and so on.

But the artist is finding out that poor health is the very first
enjoyment which he ought to sacrifice; that the sacrifice is by no
means as heroic as it appears; and that, once it is accomplished, the
odds are that all the other things he thought he must offer up may be
added unto him through his own increased efficiency.

No doubt, all this business of regimen, of constant alertness and
petty self-sacrifice, is bound to grow irksome before it settles down
in life and becomes habitual. But what does a little irksomeness
count--or even a great deal of irksomeness--as against the long, deep
thrill of doing better than you thought you ever knew how--of going
from strength to strength and creating that which will elevate and
delight mankind long after the pangs of installing regimen are
forgotten and you have once and for all broken training and laid you
down to sleep over?

Th