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( Originally Published 1908 ) IF ANYTHING IS SACRED, THE HUMAN BODY IS SACRED. AND IN MAN OR WOMAN, A CLEAN, STRONG, FIRM-FIBRED BODY IS MORE BEAUTIFUL THAN THE MOST FASCINATING FACE. In Re Muldoon PROFESSORS WILLIAM MULDOON —Muldoon the Solid Man! Muldoon the champion wrestler of the world! I have taken a few falls out of him in days agone—in a literary way—and what I will now say, I will say. Muldoon has been pronounced by competent judges a perfect physical specimen of manhood. Not one man in a million can compare with him; and age, intelligence and physique considered, he probably is without a rival on earth. He is exactly five feet ten, and weighs stripped, one hundred and eighty. He gives you a glimpse of Greece in the time of Pericles.
He has more dignity, more repose, more poise,
Knowing something of the traditions of the squared circle, you expect he will speak in a
husky gutteral, and say, "I trun him down see!"
But this man surprises you with a light, musical, exquisitely modulated voice that comes
from resonant air chambers, and a throat without a flaw.
It is a voice whose whispered word can fill a room; a voice that can ring out a calvary command that can be heard for half a mile.
If needs be, it is a voice that could talk all day and never grow weak nor hoarse.
Muldoon has no suggestion of a foreign accent, and I will admit that a man by the name of Muldoon who has no brogue is a bit disappointing.
Every action of the man implies reserve; everything he does is well within his limit.
When he sits he does not cross his legs, play the devil's tattoo with his hands, twirl his mustache, stroke his hair, scratch his nose, adjust his necktie, nor examine his finger-nails. He completes his toilet in his room.
Such control of nerves, such perfect self-possession, such absolute grace—clothed or stripped —gives hope that the spirit of Athens may yet to us return.
" I think," said Professor Muldoon to me, " I think my success—such as it is—as a trainer,
has hinged on the fact that I have never worked for great muscular strength, simply for balance, or what you call mastery or control. Few men possess their bodies, rather the body bullies the mind all day long."
Please note the remark, and tell me if the colleges haven't something to learn from Muldoon.
In fact, why does n't Harvard hire him ?
And the answer is, the services of Muldoon are not for sale, save as you go to him and become a part of his system.
MULDOON is rich, and he works now simply because he is wise and knows that no man can ever afford to be idle—that retiring on your laurels is death—unless you are working for new laurels. So Muldoon works at the task he likes, and in the way that pleases him
When a youth he began to train as a wrestler; he evolved an Idea, and this Idea is that the
mind of a man should rule his body, that the body should obey the mind.
And after nearly fifty years of work in physical training, there is only one word which for him looms large, and that is the word OBEY.
Muldoon made his body obey, and he became perfectly ambidextrous. Wrestling requires
more science than boxing, and so he specializedb on the mat instead of the gloves.
Then he took to training prize-fighters.
Members of the Society for Ethical Culture will recall that Muldoon trained Sullivan for his
match with Kilrain, and acted as Sullivan's second at the ringside. John gave the sedative
to every man he met as long as he was trained by Muldoon.
For a time the Solid Man succeeded in making John L. obey, but finally John L. decided that
in all the bright lexicon of words there is no such word as obedience. Then it was that John fell an easy prey to Corbett, who weighed thirty pounds less, but had his body under control, so that it was the ready and willing servant of his mind.
A little later, Muldoon traveled with Maurice Barrymore and played the part of Charles the
Wrestler in "As You Like It," always giving a genuine exhibition for the ladies before Charles graciously allowed Orlando to win.
Next he posed in living pictures, and gave lectures on health in various colleges. Ten years
ago he established his present " Olympia, " five miles back in the hills from White Plains,
New York.
Prize-fighters, wrestlers and athletes are no longer the object of Muldoon's solicitude; his
raw stock are business men, artists, lawyers, preachers and doctors who have gone the pace.
Muldoon has a system, a system never tried by any one else, and that never will be tried
by any one else, because no other living man dare attempt it, knowing perfectly well it would fail.
And if you know a thing is going to fail, it does. Muldoon's system is not founded on love, kindness and good cheer. These are all secondary, and while they do exist in his mind, they are kept carefully out of sight. The plan will die with him.
The key-note of the whole thing is obedience. It is necessary to subjugate the will of the patient. Paradoxically, you have to kill a man's will in order to build it up.
The whip-method of breaking horses is along the same line. The trainer goes into the box stall with a whip and terrorizes the animal until he absolutely submits, and yet the horse is never struck.
Muldoon is cruel only as Nature is cruel--you obey Nature, co-operate with her and you find
that she is kind. Obedience to Nature brings you everything you need, mental, spiritual,
physical. Obey Muldoon and cease butting-in with your stub-end of a will and you succeed.
The only way you can get the start of Muldoon is to obey him. To obey requires will power.
The average man's body has never learned to obey. It is slothful, lazy, slipshod, domineering, indifferent, disrespectful to his mind.
A man may have a creative intellect, and yet his body be a very wretch of a body, that gorges itself with bad food, swills strange drinks, refuses to go to bed at night, and declines to get up in the morning, wooing persistently the means of debility and disease.
A great poet may be swag-bellied, blear-eyed and have title to a slouching, willful, erratic, untrained digestive tract. The man has never forced his body to acquire good habits thru the law of obedience, and after years of bodily back-talk, things reach a point where this hoodlum of a physical cosmos is going down and dragging the mind with it.
As long as the man can do business, he submits to being bullied by his body. All sorts of vicious habits grow up unrebuked. The body demands cigars, cigarettes, stimulants, strange dishes, novel sights, smells, sounds and sensations, and the mind of the man is powerless, being dragged hither and yon by this willful restless beast, which often grows more gross and inefficient and full of twitchings, twists and pain as the mind evolves, develops and refines. Thought goes on, and the man may do big work, but some day the hand that reaches for the salt picks up the pepper, and the tongue that would say "pepper," says "salt."
The nerve-specialist is here called in, scowls, coughs, takes an owl-like look, and explains that it is incipient locomotor ataxia, with aphasia as a side line, all caused through poisoning of the system by uric acid—say, call it Bright's Disease and Nerv. Pros.
If the patient knows enough, as he probably does not, he goes to Muldoon and is born again.
But probably he takes to dope and drugs and dies inside of two years. Or he may haunt Hot
Springs and the sanitariums, and by baths and massage stand the reaper off for five years.
Tuberculosis is a disease of the will. If a stronger will can be found that will take charge of the other man's body at the critical time, and force right breathing, eating and exercise on the patient, he will get well. Left to himself he succumbs to inertia or a lazy habit of body, the air cells of the lungs collapse and the man dies.
Muldoon says that all diseases are the result of lack of will. He simply takes charge of the man's body. His one request is that the man abdicate his own will and obey. So difficult is obedience to the average so-called successful man, that one out of three of the patients who go to Muldoon leave him inside of two days, forfeiting their first weekly payment of sixty dollars.
If Muldoon has an opportunity of seeing the discouraged and disgruntled man before he
goes, he presents the card of a local undertaker at White Plains, wishes him good luck in purgatory and sends personal regards to Mephisto.
Those who stick it out for three days under Muldoon's treatment, remain from three to
six weeks, and get well. There may be exceptions, but this is the general rule.
MULDOON'S treatment goes under the general term of "dope," and the formula is about as follows:
You arrive at the long, plain, Quaker-gray shingled house on the hill, after a pleasant
drive of an hour from the station at White Plains.
Muldoon receives you with the quiet dignity of a Chesterfield. You are impressed by the
man, only you wish he would thaw out and sympathize with you. Later you ascertain that
Muldoon does not effuse over anybody, even over a member of the Supreme Court of the
United States.
In five minutes Muldoon's quick eyes have looked you over and he has' decided that you
have enough vitality to build on—parties in wheeled chairs or those requiring surgical
treatment never find Muldoon at home.
So you are accepted. You are gently told that you cannot have any visitors, either doctors or laymen, and that books, medicine and stimulants are tabu. The suggestion seems a trifle
curt, but you submit, and then and there bid your friends good-bye.
You watch their carriage as it slowly circles down the hill, and is lost amid the towering elms The first move is to interview the secretary he being the only person in sight.
You pay the genial young man your first week's board of sixty dollars : this advance payment
being a part of the dope, a necessary psychological item in the work of regeneration.
You are given a heavy woolen sweater, a gray pair of gymnasium trousers and a pair of felt
slippers. Then you are shown to your room and told to put on this suit and go below where the Professor will see you.
Your room is furnished with a little table, one chair, and a small iron bed. All toilet requisites are noticeable by their absence. The room looks like a cell, save that there are two open doors, one opening right out-of-doors and the other leading to the hall that runs the length of the building. These rooms, you learn, are known as "kennels." You note that there are no locks nor bolts on the doors, and if you are a cosmic, it comes to you that the insignificant matter of ventilation evidently is not in the hands of the occupant.
You sit down on the bed and think about nothing in particular, rather enjoying the view out
of the open door, listening to the drowsy hum
"The Professor is waiting for you." And then adds half confidentially, "It's all right if you mind him, but you ought to have changed your clothes at once and not lingered here. "
You murmur excuses and get into the convict's clothes in less time than you usually take to
dress. You look about for a mirror to ascertain how frightful you appear. No mirror is to be
seen.
You go down stairs and enter the gymnasium.
The Professor is there in gym dress, putting a class of a dozen thru a course of callisthenics.
Then occurs exactly what occurred when Chauncey M. Depew entered the same room under like conditions six weeks before.
The senator was yellow; there were dark baggy lines under his eyes, but the gymnasium dress
into which he had packed his senatorial person offered an excuse for art. He approached the
Professor and proffered a small pliocene pleasantry. The Professor replied, "Sir, sit down,"
in a low, clear, distinct tone.
Depew's punning proclivity vanished. He had really expected that the Professor would slap
his thigh and roar, as people in civilization were wont when the nectarine spoke, or at least smile and ask after things down in Washington. And all the Professor said was, "Sir, sit down," and went right along with his callisthenics.
"Right foot—left foot—right arm—left—up, back, down, over, out—neck to the left!"
The Senator moved over to the window, looked out, strolled down to the end of the gym. The
class was working down that way, too.
"Sir, sit down!" suddenly calls the voice of the Professor.
The Senator is sure the voice is not for him, no one had ever spoken to him like that. He still strolls.
Now comes the third order with the Professor walking toward him, "Mr. Depew, sit down !"
pointing to a seat along the wall.
The Senator is startled, then he half laughs as it comes to him that it is a joke, and he replies, "Oh, I prefer to stand, thank you."
The fourth time the order rings out and Depew realizes that it is no joke. He jumps,
shivers and stammers, " Well, I would have you know that I am a gentleman, and am I
used to associating with gentlemen. You evidently do not know me—I am Senator
Depew."
" I know, " says Muldoon with exasperating coolness, "I know you, but evidently you do
not know me. You seemingly have come here to give an after-dinner speech, to present a lecture on Delsarte, or to favor me with lessons in etiquette—SIT DOWN ! "
This time the order comes like a knock-down blow, and Depew sinks upon the seat and sits
there dazed like a boy awaiting punishment for stealing jam from a high shelf.
The Professor calmly continues his work with the class for five minutes, and then orders
Depew upon the floor and motions him his place in the line.
"Hands straight up!"
Depew puts his out in front.
"Hands straight up!" rings out the order for the second time. Depew makes haste to comply.
The work is really quite moderate, but the newcomer thinks it is severe, and is greatly
relieved when in half an hour the order is given, " To the shower-bath !"
Arriving there, all disrobe save the Senator, but when the stern order is given to " Get into the game," he begins to struggle with his sweater and is soon in the gentle guise of
Correggio's cherubim.
Men in gym suits are all on an equality. Carlyle said, "A naked House of Lords would
inspire no awe," but all he meant was that a Senator under a shower-bath would command
no senatorial courtesy.
A rough towel is tossed to each man and Depew is simply told to " Get busy!"
And he does, for it has dawned upon him that safety lies either in flight or obedience.
Supper comes and after that there is a long stroll across the meadow, over the hills and
back thru the woods, along the country road.
The western sky is colored deep with red where the sun has gone down. Over across the
moor, a half mile away, the white mist is gathering. The summer night closes down, and the
distant woods turn to purple patches. The strolling party reach the long, low house on
the hill-top, just as the clock in the kitchen is striking nine.
The Senator is told he can go to bed. No order is required. He finds his room, undresses without a light, puts on a woolen night-robe that he finds on the bedpost and tumbles into bed, subdued, tired and a bit resentful.
He has decided to go home on the morrow—the system is too severe. But before he can really
formulate his plans he is asleep, lulled by the lowing of distant cattle.
SIX o'clock!" It is the mild voice of the athletic attendant. At six-ten the attendant once more calls, this time in a chest-tone.
At six-fifteen, he returns with a bucket of water, that he is told to douse on the victim of Mrs. Morpheus without ruth. It is not necessary, the victim is cosmic, and struggles out on the floor, making a dive for duds.
"Sleep is a privilege," says Muldoon, " and when this truth is once fixed in a man's mind,
he gets busy pounding his ear the instant he
People who live on the banks of the Ganges never bathe, because they can bathe any time.
To go to bed at a certain hour and to get up at a certain hour means the cultivation of a
habit of the body. This habit puts you to bed, tucks you in, and softly sings you a lullaby that closes down your eyelids, bidding dull care begone.
Muldoon holds that it is just as necessary to get up in the morning as to go to bed at night.
DOWN below, the twenty-four men have gathered—for be it known that Muldoon takes one score and four, and no more. There are light callisthenics, a march of a half mile and back, then the shower-bath.
All this with great deliberation. The victims are given bathrobes, and told to go up-stairs,
and clothe them in their right minds and citizens' clothes.
Muldoon is a great believer in the psychology of duds. When we cat we should dress like
gentlemen, just as if we were to meet expected guests. The act of dressing and undressing tends to stop brooding, and masticating the mental limit. The late Dr. Maurice Bucke once told me that he had blocked a fit of hysteria in a woman, by asking her to go and change her
dress, and do up her hair, because he wanted her to meet a certain man from New York who
was coming to tea.
Muldoon says the gym dress is only valuable as you discard it for clean, dainty linen, and
appear before the world a new man. You get dirty in order that you may get clean, but to get
dirty and stay so is no virtue. But people who are always clean are not much better than the
other kind.
And note you this, Muldoon trains with his trainers. All that he asks them to do, he does.
He himself, is an immaculate dresser, without being extravagant. But he believes in a clean
collar, cuffs, a fresh handkerchief and dental floss.
Breakfast comes after the gentle work, the bath, and the getting ready, as a gift of the gods.
It is a simple meal of fruit, toast, poached eggs, and just one cup of coffee. I noticed that every man polished his plate, but no one asked for more.
Muldoon sits at the server's table in the middle of the room, and each plate is filled under his immediate watchful eye. Without being fussy, he yet knows exactly what every man is doing —all of the time.
The eating is done with great deliberation.
After breakfast, there is rest for just an hour, and then the word is passed, "Boots and saddles!"
You get into your riding clothes, and go to the barn a quarter of a mile away. If you are a
horseman, your animal is simply pointed out, but if the work is new, you are shown how.
Horseback riding is always a scientific treatment for the neurotic. He forgets himself in
holding on—and most of Muldoon's horses, I saw, were selected with the idea of preventing
introspection in the rider. It is a slow ride of two hours and a half. Occasionally, at the hills, you dismount and lead your horse.
One little pleasantry is occasionally indulged in when there are raw recruits who are prone to be gay. You leave your horses in charge of a groom and walk down a hill through the woods to get a drink at a famous medicinal spring.
When you get back to the road, not a horse is in sight—they have broken loose and gone home.
It is five miles to quarters—my God! or words to that effect.
Here the stout men, new to the work, begin to plead, to beg, to swear—the veterans laugh and
start off on foot.
When you get home it is strip again and a bath; then citizens' clothes and dinner.
After dinner there is a lolling time of an hour; then "the stroll," a long slow walk, over the meadow, through the woods, across the creek.
Supper comes with the novitiate hungry as a bear, and tired. Exhaustion is something else.
Then it is that the deserters desert. They bribe a stable man to take them back to town
-in a wheelbarrow—any way. The work is killing Muldoon is a tyrant!
But if they remain two days, they stay two more, and then Nature begins to play through them.
Tired, lame, sore, stupid—yes, but it is a delicious stupidity, not one of fear and cold feet. It is just a don't-give-a-dam-feeling.
A certain amount of physical exercise excites mentality; follow up your out-door work, and
mind hibernates. Exercise is an investment you expend the energy only that you may get
back more energy. You spend a hundred dollars to get back one hundred and fifty.
All this physical work is to get your body where it can rest and absorb.
The body is a storage battery—in order to replenish its cells with potential energy, you
have to get it in a state of rest. This condition of perfect rest comes best after slow, moderate exercise in the open air.
Muldoon simply carries his men over the hill to a point where they are so tired they can rest and absorb. He knows exactly what he is doing—he nearly kills them, but strangely enough, none die on the premises. Those only die who lack the will to allow him to use his will to amend theirs, and these of course are the deserters.
It is so much easier to swallow something out of a bottle, and hire a man to give you massage.
But everything costs—if you would have health, cultivate your will and expend energy.
We know enough, and if we only had the will to methodize our lives, we could all live a hundred years, unless run over by a benzine buggy.
As it is, for lack of will and lack of a Muldoon, we die just when we should be getting ready to live. Great is Muldoon, trainer of men!
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