Cyr did not give the impression of being an athlete, nor of a man in training, for he appeared to be over-fat and not particularly muscular; but he made records in lifting which, to the best of my knowledge, no other man has been able to duplicate.
John Grun Marx, a Luxemberger, must have been among the strongest men in the world at the time I knew him.

We worked on the same bill several times; but it was at the Olympia, in Paris, that he shone supreme as a strongman--and at the same time as a weak one.

For, in spite of his sovereign strength, Mars was no match for a pair of bright eyes; all a pretty woman had to do was to smile and John would wilt.
And--Paris was Paris.
Marx's strength was prodigious, and he juggled hundreds, and toyed with thousands, of pounds as a child plays with a rattle.

He must have weighed in the neighborhood of three hundred pounds, and he walked like a veritable colossus.

In fact, he reminded me of a two-footed baby elephant.
Always good-natured, he made a host of friends both in the profession and out of it.