Certainly Feats Are Accomplished And Records
Are Beaten, But There Is No Real Strength Gained, No Hardihood Built Up.
Without Hardihood It Is Of Little Avail To Be Able To Jump An Inch
Farther Than Somebody Else.
Hardihood is the true test, hardihood is the
ideal, and not these caperings or ten minutes' spurts.
Now, the way they made the boy John Brown hardy was to let him roll about
on the ground with naked legs and bare head from morn till night, from
June till December, from January till June. The rain fell on his head,
and he played in wet grass to his knees. Dry bread and a little lard was
his chief food. He went to work while he was still a child. At half-past
three in the morning he was on his way to the farm stables, there to help
feed the cart-horses, which used to be done with great care very early in
the morning. The carter's whip used to sting his legs, and sometimes he
felt the butt. At fifteen he was no taller than the sons of well-to-do
people at eleven; he scarcely seemed to grow at all till he was eighteen
or twenty, and even then very slowly, but at last became a tall big man.
That slouching walk, with knees always bent, diminished his height to
appearance; he really was the full size, and every inch of his frame had
been slowly welded together by this ceaseless work, continual life in the
open air, and coarse hard food.
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