Death of Sandow

As it must to all men, Death came last week to Eugene Sandow, aged 58, chest expansion 14 inches.

A blond man of average height, with a mustache in the Kaiser Wilhelm manner, an inadequate nose, and a body that astonishingly, at the slightest excuse, erected mountain-ranges, mounds and melons of muscles--Eugene Sandow, like Mark Hanna, Lillian Russell, George Coxey, John L. Sullivan, was one of the outstanding idols of a period that worshiped modesty in all forms, including the nude. Ladies would prod his dorsal, deltoid and pectoral development with carefully gloved fingers and ask if he were real. Sporting gentlemen with Damn-my-eyes and By-God-Sirs would lay their wagers on him when he matched strength with Samson, Cyclops, Atlas, Ajax or Hercules (rival strongmen). He was renowned for many years as the "strongest man in the world." He was appointed private trainer to His Majesty George V. He made a large fortune by bringing people into contact with dumbbells.

Once in Amsterdam he fell upon hard times. To get advertisement he went round the city and dropped pennies in automatic strength-testing machines, then wrecked them. He was arrested, set free, became the idol of Holland.

Once his automobile was wrecked. Singlehanded, to the terror of the trembling gas-hawk who had run into him, he tossed his own car out of a ditch.

Once, with the Marquis of Queensbury and Lord de Clifford as judges, before a crowd that had torn down the side doors of the Royal Aquarium to get a look at him, Sandow met Samson. Samson began by bending an iron bar over arms, calf and neck. Sandow copied him. Next Samson burst a wire cable wound around his chest. Sandow burst its fellow. Samson snapped a chain on the muscles of his arm. The chain was too small for Sandow. He called for his big dumbbell. The greatest moment of his life had come.

His dumb-bell weighed 280 pounds. He hoisted it high over head with one hand, lay down on the stage with it, cuddled and caressed it and rose again while the Aquarium rocked with cheers. He fastened chains around his arms, lifted that beloved titanic dumb-bell and burst every chain before putting it down. Samson refused to proceed any further.