Читать книгу Sandow on physical training: a study in the perfect type of the human form - Eugene Sandow - Страница 18

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The student of martial history, at least, will not need to be reminded of this. Turn the dial of time back a few hundred years, and he will recall how often the fortunes of battle depended upon the deft prowess of a single arm. Nor is the fact less true of our own time. One can hardly go into the thronged streets of our cities, or board a crowded steamboat, on pleasure bent, without being confronted with an emergency which may call our whole strength and courage into instant action. Mr. Sandow's extraordinary physical powers may be our own possession in but a faint degree; yet that they are that is an acquisition of no mean moment, for to what trained power we have we may some day owe our life. Is the argument without force as a plea for compulsory physical training?

Even in spite of himself, Mr. Sandow has become what is termed a professional athlete. To that fact, both in this country and in England, he doubtless owes much of his fame. But it is due to Mr. Sandow to say that he long resisted the clamour that he should exhibit his prowess for money and pursue professional gymnastics as a vocation. Not that, per se, the vocation is objectionable; but that, at the outset, he was under no compulsion to seek it as a profession, and was brought up in a rooted dislike to appear in public as a salaried exhibitor. The attraction to him was the enjoyment he took in