Now try a trapeze exercise, or something very like what is done on a trapeze. Sit on the chair, and place your right hand on the back of it, and with the left hand grasp the seat between your legs. Raise yourself a little by your arms, and pass your right leg through your arms to where the left is, and the left leg through to where the right was. You will then find yourself with your face to the back of the chair. Rest in that position for a few seconds, but without releasing your grasp of the chair, and then pass your legs back to their original position. This is an excellent exercise for the back and legs and arms, and though gymnastics are out of place in the sitting-room, it is a good trick to do when, as sometimes happens, some one is talking about and showing feats of strength.
In many gymnasiums there are striking-bags, filled with sawdust or sand, and hung from above by a cord. The cord is not necessary. One of the pillows of your bed will do just as well as a hanging bag. Throw it up to the ceiling, and as it comes down strike it up again, first with one hand and then with the other, and see how long you can keep it in the air. This pillow fighting is a good and not at all dangerous exercise. Pillow never hits back.
Although nothing has been said about girls doing these exercises, they are all suitable for girls, especially if done before they have finished dressing. Girls must have tumbled hair some time, and what better time than before they have combed it in the morning? Girls do not care much about foot-ball and base-ball, but they do like to have nice figures, and to be strong and healthy, and they will find no better way of becoming so than by practicing these and similar exercises.
Neither girls nor boys should try to do very much at first. Regular practice is very much better than hard work one day, and none at all the next three days. As soon as you feel tired, leave off. That is a sign that you have done enough. Fifteen minutes' exercise every morning will soon tell its tale in strong and lissom limbs and a feeling of health.
Some day you will go to a gymnasium fitted with bars and ladders and poles, and you will find yourself quite at home there. And that will be because your home gymnasium is not so very different from the public one, after all.