What precision, permit me to ask, is possible in "putting up" a heavy
dumb-bell? But in the new dumb-bell exercises there is opportunity
and necessity for all the accuracy and skill which are found in the
most elaborate military drills.

I have had experience in boxing and fencing, and I say with
confidence, that in neither nor both is there such a field for fine
posturing, wide, graceful action, and studied accuracy, as is to be
found in the new series of dumb-bell exercises.

But, it is said, if you use dumb-bells weighing only two pounds, you
must work an hour to obtain the exercise which the heavy ones would
furnish in five minutes. I need not inform those who have practised
the new series with the light dumb-bells that this objection is made
in ignorance. If you simply "put up" the light implement, it is true;
but if you use it as in the new system, it is not true. On the
contrary, in less than five minutes, legs, hips, back, arms,
shoulders, neck, lungs, and heart will each and all make the most
emphatic remonstrance against even a quarter of an hour's practice of
such feats.

At this point it may be urged that those exercises which quicken the
action of the thoracic viscera, to any considerable degree, are simply
exhaustive. This is another blunder of the "big-muscle" men. They seem
to think you can determine every man's constitution and health by the
tape-line; and that all exercises whose results are not determinable
by measurement are worthless.

I need scarcely say, there are certain conditions of brain, muscle,