WHY MEN SHOULD EXERCISE DAILY.
The advantages to men of a well-built body, kept in thorough repair, are
very great. Those of every class, whose occupation is sedentary, soon
come to appreciate this. Some part of the machinery gets out of order.
It may be the head, or eyes, or throat; it may be the lungs or stomach,
liver or kidneys. Something does not go right. There is a clogging, a
lack of complete action, and often positive pain. This physical clogging
tells at once on the mental work, either making its accomplishment
uncomfortable and an effort, or becoming so bad as to actually prevent
work at all. It may make the man ill. There is very little doubt but
that a large majority of ailments would be removed, or, rather, would
never have come at all, had the lungs and also the muscles of the man
had vigorous daily action to the extent that frequent trial had shown
best suited to that man's wants. One of the quickest known ways of
dispelling a headache is to give some of the muscles, those of the legs,
for instance, a little hard, sharp work to do. The reason is obvious.
Dr. Mitchell puts it well when he says that muscular exercise flushes
the parts engaged in it, and so depletes the brain.
But fortunately that same exercise also helps make better blood, gets
the entire lungs into action, quickens the activity of the other vital
organs, and so tones up the whole man, that, if the exercise is taken
daily and is kept up, disorder, unless very deep-seated, disappears.
It is well known that when the system, from any cause, gets run down,
disease is more likely to enter, and slower at being shaken off. Thousands
and hundreds of thousands of men and women have hard work, mental strain,
fret and anxiety, daily, and for years together--indeed, scarcely do
anything to lighten the tension in this direction. They tell you they are
subject to headache or dyspepsia, or other disorder, as if it was out of
the question to think of preventing it. But had the work been so arranged,
as it nearly always could be--far oftener than most persons think--to
secure daily an hour for vigorous muscular exercise for all the parts, this
running down would, in most instances, never come. The sharp, hot work,
till the muscles are healthily tired, insures the good digestion, the
cleared brain, the sound sleep, the buoyant spirits.
The president of one of the largest banks in this country told the
writer that, disappointed one summer in not getting a run to Europe,
reflection told him that one marked benefit such jaunts had brought him
was from the increased sleep he was enabled to get, that thereupon he
determined on longer sleeps at home. He got them, and found, as he well
put it, that he could "fight better." Beset all day long with men
wanting heavy loans, that fighting tone, that ability to say "no" at the
right time and in a way which showed he meant it, must have not only
added to his own well-being, but to the bank's protection as well.
Again, many men are liable to occasionally have sudden and very
protracted spells of head-work, where sleep and almost everything else
must give way, so that the business in hand may be gotten through with.
"Tom Brown" told the writer that, when in Parliament, he could work
through a whole week together on but four hours of sleep a night, and be
none the worse for it, provided he could have all he wanted the next
week, and that since he was twenty-five he had hardly known a sick day.
A father, tired from his day of busy toil, may have a sick child, who
for much of the night will not let him sleep. Such taxes as this, coming
to one already run down and weak, cannot be braved frequently with
impunity. Unless the five or six miles a day of Tom Brown and his
fellow-Englishmen's "constitutional," or some equivalent, is resorted
to, and the man kept well toned-up, one of these sudden calls may prove
too severe, and do serious if not fatal injury. This toning-up is not
all. If the bodily exercise is such as to get all the muscles strong,
and keep them so, the very work that would otherwise overdo and exhaust
now has no such effect, but is gone through with spirit and ease. There
is that consciousness of strength which is equal to all such trifles.
The very nervousness and worry which used to be so wearing, at the sudden
and ceaseless calls of the day, have gone, and for the reason that strong
nerves and strong muscles are very liable to go together, and not to mind
these things. What does the athlete at the top of his condition know about
nervousness? He is blithe as a lark all the day long.
Dr. Mitchell says: "The man who lives an out-door life--who sleeps with
the stars visible above him, who wins his bodily subsistence at first-hand
from the earth and waters--is a being who defies rain and sun, has a
strange sense of elastic strength, may drink if he likes, and may smoke
all day long, and feel none the worse for it. Some such return to the
earth for the means of life is what gives vigor and developing power to
the colonists of an older race cast on a land like ours. A few generations
of men living in such fashion store up a capital of vitality which
accounts largely for the prodigal activity displayed by their descendants,
and made possible only by the sturdy contest with nature which their
ancestors have waged. That such a life is still led by multitudes of our
countrymen is what alone serves to keep up our pristine force and energy."
Now, while this extreme hardiness and tone cannot be had by a person who
has twelve hours of busy brain-work daily in-doors, and only one of bodily
exercise, still, much can be done, quite enough to calm and tranquillize,
and to carry easily over those passes which used to be dreaded.
If the man who habitually works too long without a rest would every hour
or so turn lightly from his work, for even sixty seconds, to some vigorous
exercise right in his office, or even in the next room or hall-way, until
the blood got out of his brain a little, and the muscles tingled with a
hearty glow, he would go back so refreshed as to quickly make up, both in
the quantity and quality of his work, for the time lost. When his hour for
exercise came, instead of having no heart for it, he would spring to it
with alacrity, like the school-boy does to his play.
Even if the strong man does occasionally become jaded, he knows, as
Hughes did, how to get back his strength and snap, and that a tired man
is many removes from a tired-out one. There is a great deal in knowing
whether your work is overdoing you or simply tiring you. One of the
strongest and best oarsmen Harvard ever had, used, at first, to think he
ought to stop rowing when he began to perspire, and was quite astounded
when an older man told him that that was only the beginning of the real
work. There is no end of comfort to a tired man, either mentally or
physically, in the thought that sure relief is near.
Again, this relief by physical exercise will encourage the man to hope
that, if war or accident do not cut him down, he may look for a long
life, no matter how great may be the occasional strain. Few men, for
instance, familiar with the life of the Duke of Wellington will claim
that they are better workers than he was, or that they get through more
in a day or year, or that, heavy as their responsibilities may be, they
surpass or even equal those which were his for years together. Yet all
the terrible mental strain this illustrious man underwent, battling with
one of the greatest captains this world ever saw, all the exposure and
forced marching, privation and toil, which come to the faithful soldier,
and to him who holds the lives of multitudes in his hands, this man
knew, and yet so controlled his work, exacting as it all was, as to
manage to keep his body superior to all it was called on to do, and his
mind in constant working order, and this not merely up to threescore and
ten, but to fourscore good years, and three more besides. Did not the
vigorous body at the start, and the daily attention to it, pay him?
Will it be claimed that the president of one of the best-known
corporations on this continent did any more work than Wellington? That
president was at it all day, and far into the night, and when away in
Europe, nominally on a play-spell, as well. Naturally, he was a strong,
energetic man; but he had so worked, and so neglected his body, that he
died at fifty-two. Which of the two men showed the better sense?
What does cutting one's self down at fifty-two mean? Five minutes'
reflection should tell any reasonable person that the man was
overworking himself, and going at a pace no man could hold and live.
Does not this show a lack of sense, and especially when much of that
work could certainly have been done by subordinates? Was not one of
Daniel Webster's best points his skill in getting work done by
others, and saving for himself the parts he liked best?
When, after long years of toil and perseverance, one has worked himself
up to position and wide influence, is it sensible to do what his
humblest employe could rightly tell him is overcrowding, and so forcing
the pace that he certainly cannot hold it? Instead of taking that
position and that influence and wielding them for greater ends, and
improving them very markedly, must there not be a keen pang to their
owner when, tantalized with what seems surely within his grasp, that
grasp itself weakens, and the machine goes all to pieces?
These later years are especially the precious ones to the wealthy man.
They are his best days. Then his savings, and his earnings too,
accumulate as they did not when he was younger. Look at the work done by
Vanderbilt, for example, accomplished almost thirty years after he was
fifty-two! Did not the active out-door life on the little periauger of
his youth, and the daily constitutionals which, notwithstanding his
infirmities, all New Yorkers saw him taking in later life, pay him?
And are they less precious in any other line of life?
Look for a moment at the value health is to a man in any of the
learned professions--of having a sound and vigorous body, with each
branch of his vital system working regularly, naturally, and in
harmony with the rest. Do these things make no difference to the
divine? Had the sturdy, prize-fighter make of Martin Luther nothing
to do with his contempt for the dangers awaiting his appearance before
Charles V. and his Diet of Worms, and which caused him to say he would
go there though the devils were as thick as the tiles on the houses;
and with the grand stand he made for the religious light which
now shines so freely upon the whole Christian world?
Thomas Guthrie, first tying one hand behind him, with the other could whip
any man in Oxford who would also fight one-handed. Who doubts that the
vigor so evinced had much to do with the faithful, arduous life's work he
did, and did so well that all Scotland is to-day justly proud of him?
Have the magnificent breadth and depth of Spurgeon's chest, and his
splendid outfit of vital organs, no connection with his great power and
influence as a preacher of world-wide renown? Have the splendid
physique and abounding vitality of Henry Ward Beecher--greater almost
than that of any man in a hundred thousand--nothing to do with his
ability to attend to his duties as pastor, author, lecturer, and
editor--work enough to kill half a dozen ordinary men--and with the
tireless industry which must precede his marked success in them all?
Are not the towering form, the ruddy health, and grand, manly vigor of
Dr. John Hall weighty elements, first in putting together, and then in
driving home, the honest, earnest, fearless words which all remember
who ever heard him speak? Have not the great bodies of those two young
giants of the American pulpit, Phillips Brooks and Joseph Cook,
proved most valuable accessories to their great brains?
Is there anything feeble about any of these? Put the tape-measure around
them anywhere you like, and see how generous nature has been with them.
Is it all a mere chance that they happen to have splendid bodies? Why is
it that we never hear of such as these having "ministers' sore throat,"
and "blue Mondays," and having to be sent by their congregations, every
now and then, away to a foreign land to recruit their health and keep
them up to their work? Do sound and sturdy bodies, and due attention
daily to keeping them in good repair, have nothing to do with their
ability to cope at all times with the duty lying next to them--and with
their attention to it, too, in such a way as to make them so much more
effective than other men in their great life's work?
That the physician himself needs sound health and plentiful strength,
few will question; and yet, does he, from his calling alone, do anything
to insure it? Dragged from his bed at all hours of the night, thrown
daily, almost hourly, in contact with deadly disease--often so
contagious that others shrink from going where he goes, like the brave
man he must be to face such dangers--would not that general toned-up
condition of the thoroughly sound and healthy man prove a most valuable
boon to him--indeed, often save his life? And yet, does his daily
occupation insure him that boon, even though it does enable him to get
out-of-doors far more than most men who earn their living by mental
labor? Witness one of their own number, Dr. Mitchell, on this point; for
he says, "The doctor, who is supposed to get a large share of exercise,
in reality gets very little after he grows too busy to walk, and has
then only the incidental exposure to out-door air." Would not a sensible
course of physical exercise daily pay him--especially when pretty much
all the muscular work he gets of any account is for his forearms and a
little of his back, and then only when he drives a hard-bitted horse?
And does not a lawyer need a good body, and one kept in good order? After
the first few years, when his practice is once well established, he finds
that, unlike men in most other callings, his evenings are not his own, and
that, if he is going to read any law, and to attempt to keep up with the
new decisions every year, even in his own State, what between court work,
the preparation of his cases, drawing papers, consultation,
correspondence, and the other matters which fill up the daily round of the
lawyer in active practice, that reading will have to be done out of
office-hours often, or not done at all. Even in his evenings his business
is too pressing to allow any time for reading. Here, then, is a man who is
in serious danger of being cut off from that rest and recreation which most
other men can have. The long, steady strain, day and evening, often breaks
him down, where an hour's active exercise daily on the road or on the
water, with his business for the time scrupulously forgotten, together with
from a quarter to half an hour, on rising and retiring, in strengthening
his arms and chest, would have kept him as tough and fresh as they did
Bryant, not simply up to sixty, or even seventy, but clear up to his
eighty-fourth year. Every lawyer who has been in active practice in any of
our large cities for a dozen years can point to members of his Bar who have
either broken clean down, and gone to a premature grave from neglecting
their bodily health, or who are now far on the road in that same direction.
This happens notwithstanding the fact that in many places the courts do
not sit once during the whole summer, and lawyers can hence get
longer vacations and go farther from home than most men.
Let any one read the life of Rufus Choate, and say whether there was any
need of his dying an old man at fifty-five. He started not with a weak
body, but one decidedly strong. So little care did he take of it that, as
he himself well put it, "latterly he hadn't much of any constitution, but
simply lived under the by-laws." Did it hinder his distinguished compeer,
Daniel Webster, from magnificent success at the bar because he took many
a good play-spell with a fishing-rod in his hand? because he not only
knew but regarded the advantage and wisdom of keeping his body toned-up
and hearty, and so regarded it that he died, not at fifty-five, but at
the end of the full threescore years and ten? And did grand physical
presence, the most impressive which ever graced American forum or
senate-chamber--so striking, in fact, that, as he walked the streets of
Liverpool, the laboring men stopped work and backed their admiring gaze
by concluding that he must be a king--did these qualities not contribute
to that same magnificent success? Daniel O'Connell was a man of sturdier
body even than Webster, of whom Wendell Phillips says: "He was the
greatest orator that ever spoke English. A little O'Connell would have
been no O'Connell. Every attitude was beauty, every gesture grace.
There was a magnetism that melted every will into his."
Had not this wonderful man much to thank these same qualities for? Had
they not something to do with the stretching of his vigorous life, not
merely up to fifty-five, or even to seventy, but clear up to
seventy-three? How many men has the world ever seen who filled, and well
filled, more high offices than Henry Brougham, and who, no matter where
he was, was always a tireless worker? One biographer says that, as a
boy, he was the fleetest runner in the neighborhood, and this man, "as
an orator, second in his time only to Canning;" this man, who once spoke
in Parliament for seven days consecutively, who, even when upward of
seventy, showed his zeal for reform by urging the introduction into
England of the New York Code of Procedure--this one of England's
most famous Lord Chancellors took such care of his body that he
never ceased from his labors until he was eighty-nine.
Let us look at but one more instance of the way a powerful mind and an
uncommonly strong body blend and aid their possessor to his purposes. A
recent writer in "Blackwood" says of Bismarck: "_He is a powerful man. That
is what strikes at once every one who sees him for the first time._ He is
very tall and of enormous weight, but not ungainly. Every part of his
gigantic frame is well-proportioned--the large round head, the massive
neck, the broad shoulders, and the vigorous limbs. He is now more than
sixty-three, and the burden he has had to bear has been usually heavy; but
though his step has become slow and ponderous, he carries his head
high--looking down, even, on those who are as tall as himself--and his
figure is still erect. During these latter years he has suffered frequent
and severe bodily pain, but no one could look upon him as an old man, or as
one to be pitied. On the contrary, everybody who sees him feels that
_Prince Bismarck is still in possession of immense physical power_."
And what holds good as to professional men in this respect of course will
apply with equal force to busy brain-workers in any other line as well. It
is nowhere claimed here that there have not been in many callings great men
whose bodies were indifferent affairs, but endeavor has been made to show,
not only that a great mind and a vigorous body can go together, but that
the latter is, not to the man of unusual mental power alone, but to every
man, a most valuable acquisition, and one that he should, if he does not
possess it already, take prompt steps to secure, and then, once acquiring
it, should use the means, as Bryant did, to retain it.
In the 1877-'78 annual report of Harvard College, President Eliot, who
has been exceptionally well-placed to observe several thousand young men,
and to know what helps and what hinders their intellectual progress, adds
his valuable testimony to the importance of vigorous health and regular
physical exercise to all who have, or expect to have, steady and severe
mental work to do. Busy professional men may well heed his words. Speaking
of the value of scholarships to poor but deserving young men, he says: "If
sound health were one of the requisitions for the enjoyment of
scholarships, parents who expected to need aid in educating their boys
would have their attention directed in an effective way to the wise
regimen of health; while young men who had their own education to get
would see that it was only prudent for them to secure a wholesome diet,
plenty of fresh air, and _regular exercise_. A singular notion prevails,
especially in the country, that it is the feeble, sickly children who
should be sent to school and college, since they are apparently unfit for
hard work. The fact that, in the history of literature, a few cases can be
pointed out in which genius was lodged in a weak or diseased body, is
sometimes adduced in support of the strange proposition that physical
vigor is not necessary for professional men. But all experience
contradicts these notions. _To attain success and length of service in any
of the learned professions, including that of teaching, a vigorous body is
well-nigh essential._ A busy lawyer, editor, minister, physician, or
teacher has need of _greater physical endurance_ than a farmer, trader,
manufacturer, or mechanic. All professional biography teaches that
_to win lasting distinction in sedentary, in-door occupations,
which task the brain and the nervous system, extraordinary toughness
of body must accompany extraordinary mental powers_."