Bumpus." Then I looked at the back, and
saw it was a Handbook of Gymnastics and
Athletics.

"Now," says he, "Blobb, just make a point
of doing regularly, every morning for a few
months, some of the exercises set you in this book.
I walk, I do; and you'll find my coach-house and
stable-yard, just over the way there, fitted up
as it ought to be, with help to stretch your
limbs instead of help to do without 'em. There's
a Rack there, and a Knotted Rope, and a Hanging
Plank; besides a Buck, and a Vaulting
Horse, and a Climbing Wall, and all that sort
of thing, in the yard. The book's a capital one,
though taken from a popular German Turnbook,
and perhaps a little too much on the German
Turn system for your English lazy bones.
Look into it after dinner, and come over to
me, if you like, every morning, say, at ten. I
keep a Director of Exercises instead of a
Coachman."

So Bumpus went away, and left the book.
And the first Turn it gave me was when first I
opened it, and saw it full of awful pictures of
men hanging by their legs, like weathercocks
from poles, and twisted this way and that,
as if suffering all the tortures of the Inquisition.
The first bit of reading my eyes lighted
on was part of a long chapter on THE RACK,
which said, "We divide the exercises at THE
RACK into six great groups, viz.:

"1st. Exercises hanging by the upper
extremities;

"2nd. Exercises hanging by upper and lower
extremities;

"3rd. Exercises hanging by the lower
extremities only."

That day I read no more. The bare notion
of being exercised on the Rack while hung head
downwards, like the prize hog with a rosette in
its back at the butcher's shop-door, very nearly
took my legs from under me. Next day, as I
had nothing else to do, when I had done my
newspaper, I resumed Bumpus's book; and as
I felt unsteadiness of the legs coming on when
I opened it and looked at the pictures, I took
four glasses of port wine, according to the
saying—one for health, two for cheer, three for my
friend, four for my enemy. That enemy is
Bumpus, as will presently be made more
clear.

Four glasses of port just supplied me with
courage enough to read, and I saw—

That this was a book on Gymnastic Exercises,
by E. G. Ravenstein, F.R.G.S., &c., President
of the German Gymnastic Society, London;
and John Hulley, Gymnasiarch, of Liverpool.

That these gentlemen had endeavoured to
explain the different exercises as clearly as
possible, and without doing violence to the
English tongue.

That they had drawn much upon a Turn-book
by Mr. A. Ravenstein, of Frankfort-on-the-
Maine.

That Gymnasiarchs were much honoured in
Ancient Greece.

That the Romans were less refined gymnasts.

That his Majesty, King Teutobach, of the
Teutons, vaulted over six horses standing side
by side.

That in eighteen hundred and eleven, when
the modern Teutons were bowed down under
the yoke of a foreign oppressor, the great
Jahn, whose aim was to regenerate the people
and make them strong enough to break,
or agile enough to jump out of, the said
yoke, opened the first public Gymnasium near
Berlin.

I am myself a Briton, and a single man,
under the yoke of no oppressor, foreign or
domestic; so I don't want to be taught how to
get out of that sort of thing. But I went on to
read how Jahn's efforts were successful, and
Gymnasia multiplied in Germany, until "the
friends of darkness interposed," and in eighteen
hundred and eighteen the Gymnasia were shut
up by the Police as hotbeds of something or
other. Well, Bumpus's Gymnasium, at any
rate, is not among his hotbeds. He distinctly
told me that he had it in his coach-house and
his stable-yard. We are safe against the
Powers of Darkness, so far, if they are as
hostile to hotbeds in England as in Germany.
Jahn was "thrown into prison," but, being
a Gymnast, no doubt he came down upon
his legs. He was let out in eighteen twenty-
five, and lived, my book tells me, to see
Gymnastics introduced into the schools by Royal
Decree in eighteen forty-two, and "societies
of young men flourishing all over Germany."
No doubt of it. The way the young men of
this generation do go flourishing about in society
all over England, too, is dreadful to us elderlies.
Happily, there is no son of mine among them.
From Germany, Gymnastics spread to
Denmark; thence to Sweden, where P. H. Ling
developed a peculiar system, and especially drew
men's attention to the treating of diseases by
gymnastic exercise. Into France these
Gymnastics were first introduced by Colonel F.
Amoros. In England, rowing, cricket, football,
and other out-door exercises of the body have
long been popular; but the German system of
gymnastic training has been only lately
introduced by Athletic and Gymnastic Societies,
which are now prospering and multiplying
in our cities. For their use especially, but
also for schools and private students, here
(in Bumpus's book) was a treatise with the
exercises and positions of the body, on the
German system, classified and explained by
diagrams and sketches, and so forth, and so
forth.

After reading as much as I could, it struck me
that it would be a good thing to go over the next
day, at ten A.M., to Bumpus's stable, and take a
turn upon the Rack; for, after all, the Rack is
only a horizontal bar to grasp at and hang from;
and although "hanging by the hocks" is one
part of the exercise described, I don't admit
that I have got hocks, and, if I had, I am not
bound to hang myself by them, or in any other
way.