Bodymaster

“ Thank God for that!
"Yet even as I write I know that The Bodymaster is planning my death. He has it within his power to drive my soul from out my body—to usurp this tenement of clay with his own polluted brain. How he works his wonders I will describe later if I am able. It is hard for me to think consecutively.
"Lessman's is the greatest brain, his the most wonderful intellect, the world has ever known. His is the accumulated wisdom of the centuries—since Jesus of Nazareth trod this earth there has been none who could accomplish the wonders he has performed. ”

“ What happened? Did I kill Lessman? Did he and Meta and Avis perish in the fire with the other poor unfortunates? Nobody knows.
I HAVE just learned that a woman a golden-haired woman—was found a week ago in a demented condition in a far distant town. The reports say that she mumbles something about "The Bodymaster!" Can it be Avis? I leave tonight for the hospital where she is confined. If it be she, perhaps my presence will recall her to herself.
THE END.
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929. ”

“ Luxury, clothes, good food—everything that a woman cares for—will be hers. Refuse, and she goes back to her cell—to the squalor and dirt and vermin from which came the poor wretch you have just seen.
"'You and you alone can save her!'
"He stopped dramatically. There was but one answer. May God in Heaven have mercy on my soul! I have become Lessman's partner in crime—an accomplice of that foul thing, the Bodymaster—I who have sworn to bring him to justice!
"But I have saved Avis." ”

“ Meta is holding a flashlight—And yet it is not Meta! It is another—a girl, fair-haired, sweet of face—yet her will is the will of Meta. Meta’s is the driving force behind her actions, just as my body is driven onward by the iron will of the Bodymaster....
“Some one is approaching. We step behind the curtain. He enters and snaps on the light. At sight of the open safe, he turns. He is about to give the alarm.... There is a knife in my hand.... I strike! God in Heaven! I have killed him!... We seize the jewels from the safe and escape....” ”

“ A dream must have some foundation.
FROM THE DIARY.
"THE unforeseen has come to pass. That which I have just witnessed God never intended that mortal eyes should see. At the very thought of it my body trembles and every nerve tingles as if from electric shock.
"Where is Lessman? Did the Bodymaster and his female accomplice perish in the ruins of their own diabolical art? I hope so. It is better that I—that all of us—die of starvation, locked as we are in this horrible den, than that others should share the fate which has been meted out to us. ”

“ I took a degree at Princeton before I took up the business of crime detection. But my knowledge is elementary compared with that of Lessman. But I am getting away from my subject.
"Under the spell of his eloquence, I forgot that I was the servant and he the master—that I was merely a prisoner, subservient to my jailor's will. For an hour we discussed the subject; I was as interested as he. There is, he claims, no heights to which man can not climb, providing he so wills. To him man is—or should be—absolutely the master of his own body and soul. ”

“ My head aches. My face is covered with bruises. My hair is matted with blood. Lessman must have conquered. I wonder how fared the girl with the mass of shimmering, golden hair. Surely, with all these bruises, it could not have been a dream."
CHAPTER V.
MORE FROM THE DIARY.
"SHE loves me! We met today for the first time, unfettered by the insidious chains the Bodymaster has woven about us. Her name is Avis—Avis Rohmer. She has told me all.
"Perhaps it is a part of his diabolical plan to allow us to see each other. He knows that I will never seek to escape until I can take her with me. ”

“ It surely ought to be; but I am sorry to say that in some houses the servants get the master to do as they like, and then the body-house has a bad time, for “whether one member suffer, all the members suffer with it.” The apostle Paul said, “I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection,” and this is the work given to the master of every body-house. The mind should know what is good for the body, and, though the servants may ask many times to do as they like, he should firmly say, “No,” whenever they wish to do wrong. ”

“ There was an elemental economy about his body—as was there about all our bodies. The chest was deep, it is true, cavernously deep; but there were no full-swelling muscles, no wide-spreading shoulders, no clean-limbed straightness, no generous symmetry of outline. It represented strength, that body of my father’s, strength without beauty; ferocious, primordial strength, made to clutch and gripe and rend and destroy. ”

“ The tall form, broad of shoulder, deep of chest, narrow of hip, though not yet come to the fulness of maturity, was of the evident strength fitted to toil hugely at the beck of its owner’s will. The agent, conscious of a puny frame that had served him ill in life’s struggle, experienced a half-resentment against this youth’s physical excellence. ”

“ The poise of the head, the erect position of the shoulders, the proper holding of the arms and hands, depend upon the training and development of the arms and shoulders. Most persons are negligent in this respect and allow the upper part of their bodies to hang by their bones. This is noticeable in those who are “stoop shouldered,” a habit which becomes fixed. The first thing a soldier is trained to do is to stand erect and hold himself up by his muscles. No person who can not control his upper muscles will acquire any grace or beauty of movement. ”

“ The massage influences the legs, but not to such an extent as in exercise No. 3, first, because each is here only massaged with one hand and secondly, because the muscles are kept more rigid by the bending of the body, for the reason that the weight of the body is upon them. It influences the muscles, nerves and vessels of the abdomen, the hips, the sides, the chest and breasts, the lower and upper back and especially the spine and the buttocks. It also influences the heart, the liver both from in front and behind, and the kidneys. ”

“ The Master's grip is given by taking hold of each other's right hand, as though you were going to shake hands, and sticking the nails of each of your fingers into the joint of the other's wrist, where it unites with the hand. In this position the candidate is raised, he keeping his whole body stiff, as though dead. The Master, in raising him, is assisted by some of the brethren, who take hold of the candidate by the arms and shoulders. ”

“ But you see a master in every school daily and hourly protesting against the awkw r ardness of his pupils' guards, against the clenching of the hand, the tension of the arm, the stiffness of the shoulder, in fact the wilful and sinful expenditure of force, without once explaining to them, so clearly that they never can forget it, the essential difference between the complete repose of the guard and the vivid muscular action of the attack.
To show how natural is our position, attempt in any manner to change it. There are many ways, but all will equally fail. ”

“ Indeed, in more than one instance which has come under our observation, the man looked as though, should you scrape all these great muscles completely off, leaving the bare framework, he would have actually a small chest; much smaller than many a fellow who had not much muscle. There hangs to-day—or did some time since—on the wall of a well-known New York gymnasium, a portrait of a gymnast stripped above the waist, which shows an exact case in point. ”

“ The development of the chest, the muscular strength of the limbs, the fulness of life in the whole figure, are forcibly expressed, but without exaggeration. The muscles do not stand out like ropes around a fleshless torso; there is athletic strength, the perfection of trained manhood, but no gauntness or unsightliness; sound elastic flesh clothes sinews powerful as steel. The hand which holds the sword has closed on it with the rigidity of death. The passage from life to death is portrayed with great fidelity. ”

“ Look, for example, at the arm, or any of the limbs, or [Pg 253] the chest of a young man who has never had any physical training, and what do you behold? Nothing in true shape; nothing full of life or resistance; everything soft and flabby and girlish; in short, a frame incapable of the slightest endurance, and a hot bed ready to receive and force at any moment the seeds of disease. On the other hand, take in at a glance the limbs and form of the man of trained muscles, and who is accustomed to the exercise necessary to their perfection. ”

“ We must not sacrifice nerve tissue and nerve power in physical training, as there is danger of doing if gymnastics are not guided by professional men. But the proper training of the body should produce the highest intellectual results.
Certain parts of the body bear certain relations to one another. The office of the stomach is to supply the body with nourishment. The office of the heart is to pump this nourishment over the body. The office of the lungs is to feed the heart and stomach with pure blood. All support one another, and all are dependent on each other. ”

“ When we use our muscles, they grow large and strong. You have seen the blacksmith’s arm and noticed how large and strong it is. To use our muscles does not wear them out, but does them good.
Elmer: I should think the muscles were our servants, to do whatever we wish done.
Mother: Yes; and better servants no person ever had. If the brain says, “I want a book,” the muscles of the legs carry the body where the book is; those of the eye look for it; those in the arm and hand lift it; and the master of the house gets what he wants. We can not move or do anything without these servants to help us. ”

“ When he was gone I opened the chest with my key without any hope of profit from doing so. There were the three or four loaves [p. 41] which my master thought the rats had not begun upon. Night and day I thought of some other plan, with the help of my hunger, for they say that it is an aid to invention. It certainly was so with me. One night I was deep in thought, meditating how I might use the contents of the chest again. My master was snoring loudly, so I took an old knife and went to the chest. ”

“ But look at the long slope of shoulder—the chest wide enough to give the largest lungs free play in their labor—the flat, square quarters, the muscular fullness of the upper limbs, so perfectly "let down," the clear, sinewy legs, without a curb-mark or windfall to tell tales of fearfully fast work and hard training—and you will wonder less how the championship was won. ”

“ Any kind of physical exercise then which, while developing the muscles of the arm, for instance, throws undue strain upon the heart or involves the fixation104 of the chest for a considerable period—as occurs in various feats of strength, whether with weights or upon bars or the like—is ipso facto to be condemned. It is now recognized that in the training of soldiers much harm is often done in this way to the essential muscles, while others, more conspicuous but of relatively no importance, are being developed. ”

“ Every muscle of his powerful frame gained more rigid tension at the thought, and when he was presently hit by the sword of his hitherto unconquered foe, and felt the warm blood flow over his breast and left arm, he collected all his strength. ”

“ That such effects have been produced is unquestionable: they are fully exemplified in the astonishing exploits of our most celebrated pedestrians and pugilists, which are the infallible results of such preparatory discipline. The skilful trainer attends to the state of the bowels, the lungs, and the skin; and he uses such means as will reduce the fat, and at the same time invigorate the muscular fibre. The patient is purged by drastic medicines; he is sweated by walking under a load of clothes, and by lying between feather beds; and his limbs are roughly rubbed. ”

“ For by the use of the biceps, let us say, no other organ of the body (except in so far as quickened respiration and circulation is the result of muscular effort) is directly benefited, whereas by the use of the extensive muscles of the chest in a proper manner, freedom and strength are directly procured for the lungs, or by the use of the muscles of the abdomen in a proper manner, the action of certain internal organs is facilitated. ”

“ Good chest and lung development, a strong heart, well-developed and firm muscles are the tripod on which rests physical endurance and resistance to disease. And this was just where the entire class was found to be gravely subnormal.
Physical training consists primarily of heart training; in increasing the breathing capacity; in strengthening and developing the heart and other muscles of the body. As [Pg 22] the muscles become stronger the body is held more erect, and this favors, as we have seen, all of its functions. ”

“ I commence the ascent with my body-guard, who appear now to look upon me as a piece of brittle china, and are most anxious to prevent me using my limbs in my own way—they will not let me take a step without their assistance. ”

“ Putting aside for the moment the question of the vices, and regarding only the gain to moral power which comes of bodily exercise and physical conditioning, it should be self-evident that the process which builds the muscle must also train and alert the mind. How could it be otherwise? Every physical act must have as its origin a mental impulse, conscious or unconscious. Thus in training a man to master his muscles we also help him to master his brain. ”