Page:How to Get Strong (1899).pdf/94

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HOW TO GET STRONG

But what is the man to do who is to bear great responsibility? He cannot get young again, and rebuild his body. He must take such a one as he has, and do the best he can with it. But who does that? Do you know of any one? Are you doing the best you can for your body,—when you are doing nothing at all for it?

What daily work are you doing to make yourself strong?

Emerson says: "In all human action those parts will be strong, which are used." But if you do not use your arms and back; your neck and the front of your chest; your waist; your legs; your lungs, or your heart—need you be surprised if, by-and-by, they get weak; and, as you do nothing to make them strong, if they stay weak?

Barring the case of organic defect; there is just one person to blame if your body, or any part of it, gets weak. And that is yourself. At once you reply, as millions do, "Oh! I have no time for exercise." That is not true. You have time for it; no matter how busy you are.

Let us see. You are earning, upon an average, a certain sum each day. Let some man, or Trust Company, amply able to, give you as much more as you now earn, if, neglecting no duty, or part of your work, you yet exercise an hour a day, for the next year. Well, you would get that money. You would find out how to; and you would do it. And, instead of hurting you; it would do you good in two ways. You would do more and better work; and you would prolong your life. You would also be strong all over all the time, instead of weak; and so would increase your vitality, and, as Blackie well says: "The measure of a man's vitality is the measure of his working-power." Gladstone—almost as hard a worker as you; and used to almost as

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