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di ii , uL ■\ , „ v V V el if ". \ '', ’>i i* V: -m \ ; ife, *- \ v : v XS$ c ffi Mrs. Watts in the Position of the Goddess Fortuna, Drawn Up on the Extreme Point of Her Toes, Ihe “Very Essence of Force, Able to Rise Above Things Earthly.” HAS the secret of perfection of body and soul held by the Greeks been found? Is It within the power of a modern woman to equal the beauty ascribed to the HAS the secret of perfection of body and soul held by the Greeks been found? Is It within the power of a modern woman to equal the beauty ascribed to the goddesses of the Greeks and realized by their women, if she will work in the light of this secret? Mrs. Diana Watts, an accomplished English woman, claims that she has not only found this secret but real ized it in herself. She has much proof on her side and is about to publish a large volume, with hun dreds of pictures illustrating her How Wild Beasts Kill More Human Beings Than War WE are not yet civilized. The world hag not freed Itself from the savage beasts'that prey upon human beings. Statistics prove that thousands are destroyed annually by tigers, lions, snakes, crocodiles, etc. Man must still de fend himself from the hordes of wild beasts that range the forests of the •world. India is perhaps the greatest suf ferer. for, ccording to statistics of the year 1011, the latest collated, tigers on the peninsula of Hindustan devoured seven hundred and sixty seven human beings. But this is a small part of all the victims of wild beasts and venomous serpents, for t they reached tbe awful total of twenty-six thousand, two hundred and forty-two iu that year. V';: C v . ■-, : T %, «t\ .V . M%m •■ ■-. . -Cv- ■■ K:xi 1 ■ t -..•■&.• 4 ... s$ , -™B§§§ Min^yr^MßEiri ) mm, •■ aSMHPliliiP^P^ • ■ H method of attaining this Ideal of the ancient Greeks. This w6rk will appear almost as once from the press of Fred erick A. Stokes Company, New York. All the world admits, after studying the sculpture and vase paintings of ancient Greece, that the Greeks were undoubt edly the physical superiors of of all races that ' existed before or since. There was some great principle by which the Greeks were guided and Mrs. Watts believes that this secret consists in a condition of the muscles totally different from any realized by ath letes since the time of the Greeks, a condition of tension, which trans forms dead weight Into a living forc9, and which made the Greek as different from the modern human being as a stretched hand differs from a slack one. While the Greek child did not go to the gymnasium until It was five years old, the training of the babies began in the home. The two most Important things with which the Greek child began Its physical train ing were: The cultivation In Its The records of the last ten years, from 1002 to 1011, show that the wild beasts of India exacted the ter rible toll of 243,314 human lives. Of course, during this same period more than a million domestic cattle have been killed by these beasts of prey in India. But India-has no monopoly In this slaughter. There are no avail able statistics of the enormous num ber of natives that are slain by these beasts In Africa every year, but there Is enough to Indicate that the num ber of the victims of lions, leopards and buffalo are fens of thousands. These figures have no relation to the Immense number of natives not employed by Europeans, and an of ficer of the Narobl estimates the loss there at five hundred a year. Besides, fifteen Europeans were torn or trample, b;. i” In. as or Mow to be -ay Beautiful I *' I I Sir Frederick Leighton’s Master piece, “Greek Girls Flaying Ball,” the Action of Whose Figure and Its Lines Illustrate Perfectly Mrs. Watts’s Theory of Tension. muscles of a condition that made possible the maximum amount of activity, and tha mastering of the laws of balance, which enabled that activity to be controlled with the smallest expenditure of force. The weight was thrown chiefly upon the twill of the foot, the heel being almost en tirely dispensed with, and this helped to give the Greek foot its perfect form. This helps to give that appearance of fly ing to the Greek, and he really Is possessed of a won derful elasticity in_ this way. Mrs. Watts claims that the modern foot can be brought back to something of this Greek perfection if proper shoes are worn. All shoes should have thin, pliable soles, to enable the springs of the foot to work freely, the movement thus pro moted, together with a soft felt inside sole for cold weather, ensures more warmth than a thick hard sole can ever do. The heel need not he more than three-quarters of an inch high, nor need the shoe be square and ugly, but it should have the graceful curves of the natural foot. elephants, and thirty-two natives met death by the same beasts. In 1007 the Rhodesian lions killed one hundred and nineteen, and Portuguese East Africa chronicled itho loss of two hundred persons, among whom were three European hunters. •China, which has tried to annihi late wild beasts from Its territories these many centuries, still loses at least a thousand inhabitants a year by the claws of fjgcrs, wolves and bears. Even little Corea has not succeeded In exterminating the long haired ferocious tigers with which flint country is Infested, more than two thosnnd of its Inhabitants dls appearing through their agency every yea r. The most formidable type of tigers is the majestic Siberian tiger (Tigris Amiri nC.-i, and no exact statistics of Ids ... eg.- ore available, but he ar a vareek ijodde./y. A Woman’s Interesting New Theory of (( Tensions,” That Enables You t N\ HI * v !: iP "JsOa '%&& * Ip 111 JSPlil If&JMlyir d JSw. pity | : '-wy nSmiM Jm IllliPiir miuL JR: .‘ii VvSp-s'’ The Statue of the Youth of Suhiaco, Showing the Spring*. Held in Abeyance, a Striking Instance of Perfect Balance. ' The word tension, according to this author, means “elasticity,” t.he condition of “stretch” being tho pre liminary essential for the muscles tn all exercises of training performed ranges the forests of the Amur River, where Russia Is only nominally s>v eHgn, and during three months of l!Kif» the tigers if one province killed twelve natives and twenty-seven Rus sian subjects. #? whom two were of ficers and eight were soldiers, and one hundred and thirty-two Chinese immigrants, or a total of one hun dred and sevmty-ono victims. This province Is only otic-fifth of the ter ritory where these tigers rang*, so their victims must, run Into the thou sands annually. The bears and wolves of Siberia help the tigers In their war against ,nan, and, according to the figures of the Department of Whiter and Forests >f Siberia 5,234 persons, na tives and convicts, were killed by wild beasts In one yonr. On the Russian steppes bears and wolves tight for possession, slaying ns many as one hundred and twenty- Copyright, 1814, by the Star Company. Oreat Britain Itlghts Reserved. to Remodel Your Own Body into the Like 's ness of the Ancient I Masterpieces yiJte of Classic Art by the Greeks. It Is only when there is complete connection, through “stretch” of a!i the muscles wlih the centre of gravity, that any move ments can he executed without strain. human -being n yonr. The wild beasts of Europe, not, counting snakes, cause the death of some 1,200 human beings each year. The man-eater Is usually an old, more or less desereplt, lion or tiger, that Is too slow or weak to get the usual wild game, anil, having once tasted human flesh, finds It easier to slink around a settlement and grab Its prey, than to hunt. One of these tigers has the bloouy recor 1 of having eaten thirty-two human beings in forty-live days, be ing killed at last by an English of ficer. In another district not far re moved a man-eater terrorized a dozen villages for more than three months, and although hunted by the two thousand natives nil this time, he managed to kill and devour fifty of them. He finally killed himself, Jumping over a picket fence and Ini tialing himself on the pickets. It Is a connection of the farthest outposts # wltih headquarters, the cen tre of the main weight. If any part of the body is slack it means just so much dead weight to be carried and just by so much drag upon the movement will the rhythm be dislo cated. Dislocation means strain and fatigue owing to the disturbance of proportion of the forces in activity. The slimness of the hips of the . Greeks In men and women was due to this condition of tension. The waist muscles having been properly developed as well as those of the back, the upper part of the body was lifted from the socket of the pelvis and did not sag down on it. Tilio preliminary position noce» sary to attaining this full stretch is thus defined by Mrs. Watts. "Begin by placing the feet close together so that, ihe heels and the whole of the inside line of the feet are touching, tho weight of the body well forward over the ball of the feet. Although the heels may just touch the ground, there must be no weight upon them. V. tflßpl rail f r "** ; P ’ / | 4 I “The arms should he drawn down to their full length at the sides, with fingers pressed together but fully extended. Now, lift the chin (but without pushing the neck too far back on the spine), and raise tho head well up from the shoulders by drawing the neck muscles up to their full stretch. "This movement is followed by the pulling up of the watst muscles with a simultaneous downward stretch of 'he arms to prevent hunching up the shoulders. Great care must be taken not to contract the diaphragm un naturally by holding the breath while si retching It. “The pulling up of Ihe waist, mus cles really constitutes a drawing up of the body away from the legs, as It were, which should make tho coun ter stretch downwards.” The middle of the diaphragm Is held to be tho centre of gravity and from it all the currents of tension should go out to the rest of the body. Mrs. Watts has developed series of movements, starting from this first position, by which the body acts easily, gracefully arid In perfect ac cord. In order to secure diagrams of the precise course of the action of the body she has had a largs num ber of rnovlng-plctures taken of her self while exercising, and these ap pear In the hook explaining her sys tem. In order to show how the feet describe certain mathematical fig ures on the floor she had electric lamps attached to her heels, and then with a camera suspended over her heud, the room being darkened, exact diagrams of each exercise were made. Taking, for example, Exercise Vfll., of which the diagram appears, the preliminary position having been A Photograph of a “Tension” Pat tern Traced by Electric Lights on the Feet of Mrs. Watts and. Below It,, the Same Pattern in Geometrical Form. taken, a short step back with the left foot. Is the first move, the toe of tho right foot touching the floor, both knees perfectly straight. Carry the uplifted arms and shoulders round to the left until the arms form a right angle to the direction of the feet. Then the right foot comes around and back In a sweeping inward curve, until in line with the left foot. Aa tho right foot touches the ground, tho knee should bend, lowering the body about live inches. The left foot should now be touching the ground with the extreme point of the big toe, and although the heel will bo well raised, the direction of the whole foot should be exactly the same as it was when having taken the first step backward. The diagram makes It easy to carry out what would otherwise appear a complicated movement, but It is by this and the other exercises that the author has succeeded in obtaining this tension of the body which Is tho secret of It all. Mrs. Watts claims that when per fectly tense the body Is In conscious connection with some external force, to which It responds by vibration. She asserts that it is even possible for a human being In tho highest state of tension to lose all consciousness of bodily weight, having as It were, come In touch with some other force, and become pnrt of It, to the extent of being ahlo to make use of Its power. When thug attuned we realize life at its maximum, and gain an insight Into the almost limitless possibilities of a perfectly trained will power, and to visualize the result of a brain mechanism so perfect structurally that It neither distorts nor obstructs the stream of consciousness which flows through each human mind from the "Mother Sea.” To the old Greeks the training of that, particular muscle which was ‘of all possessions the highest,” formed the secret of the marvellous unity of their development. Mrs. Watts says “The definite re action of this diaphragm upon the spirit Is proved In moments of Joy when one takes deep, expanding breaths which lift, one up; while in depression ones head falls forward, one’s ‘heart sinks,’ us the saying ts, and there Is a general feeling of col lapse.” By the practice of tense uplifting movements, you may Induce its cor responding state of mind, It Is this which explains how the basic prin ciples of aesthetic law are Indis solubly connected with the dynamlo Insttnet, for In finely balanced, tense movement lies the solution of the problem of this law, and a clear answer is given to the reason ‘‘why’* of our perception of beauty In what ever form it may be expressed, either through music or painting or sculpture. This answer Is the power of life, physical and mental, and, rightly understood, the exhortation of the Psalmist, In the words "Lift up your hearts” comes to have a literal more than a figurative meaning. It. Is the contention that "On the strength of the diaphragm depends the strength of the spirit, that un quenchable flame of conscious will power, the energising fire that Aris totle culled ‘the reality, onergeln’ In contradistinction to the tempor ality of mere hraln mechanism. "The power to % respond Is the highest desire of the human being. Without it man Is lost; with this power developed to its utmost limits, Ibe road Is clear, and nothing can ob struct or discourage." To the human being whose organ ism has been trained to recognize and respond to the highest laws comes reward In the shape of a power to discern and accept the Inevitable without wasting energy and strength In useless combat, at the same time realizing how few conditions are In evitable with a will strong enough to overcome and dominate circum stance rntber than be moulded by It. This result, once achieved, Is for ever; there Is no slipping back, no growing stiffness of knee-joints to be remedied, no slackening muscles to be, worked up, no aching spine that requires longer hours of couch repose each month or year, no nervoua strain or Irritability or uncertainty, only calm confidence In The powor to envisage unshaken every eventuality. Everything work* in harmony, and the physical disintegration, inevitable under tho lgw, becomes almost Im perceptible from Its unity of change The Position of the Statue Reproduced by Mrs. Watts, Proving Tension and Balance as Its Secrets.