Modern Gymnasiums.

From a paper on physical training, in a recent medical journal, we clip the following words, which may serve to place in a stronger light the advantages which we enjoy for gymnasium exercise.

"As we have said, the growth of our cities has done much to curtail the opportunities for obtaining open air exercise which our young men formerly enjoyed. But this evil has been met by erecting gymnasiums, such as, in our younger days, never even entered our dreams. Here in Boston we have the gymnasiums of the Young Men's Christian Union, and Young Men's Christian Association, open to all, on the payment of a merely nominal fee. The youth of our higher schools have access to the excellent gymnasium of the Boston Latin School, on Warren avenue, though, it must be admitted, under such restrictions as to seriously impair its usefulness * * * * * But perhaps the most noticeable change is that which has taken place in the time and attention devoted to the physical training of college students. It is, so to speak, but few years since the undergraduates at most of our colleges were left to shift for themselves. Now every facility is offered them for exercise of the body, as well as of the mind * * * * from Harvard, with its magnificent Hemenway Gymnasium, down to the smallest "fresh water" college, we note a steady improvement in this all-important branch of culture. Evidently we are soon to realize the time-worn maxim, mens sana in corpore sano.

We are, it may be said, standing on the threshold of an era of better things. In the days of our college career. We were want to consider a gymnasium as extremely well supplied with apparatus if it contained a few pairs of dumbbells and Indian clubs, with the addition of a pair of parallel bars, and a horizontal bar: now, upon entering a gymnasium fitted up according to modern ideas, one is fairly bewildered at the maze of complicated apparatus which meets the eye. Bathing facilities were rare, in the old days: now no gymnasium is complete without its copious supply of water, hot and cold, fixed tubs, and shower baths."