A CHAPTER FROM A BUSY LIFE.
Written for Health Culture, 151 West Twenty-third Street, New York.
My Dear Mr. Turner:
About once a year I get around to make my bow to the readers of Health Culture, to let them know that I am neither dead nor sleepeth, but, instead, as the years go by, my enthusiasm for perfect health and manly strength keeps ever apace with the times.
As figures do not lie (except in election returns), I trust that the following comparative table will prove to your many readers that the fool doctor of Chicago was entirely off his base when he declared that a man could not and should not attempt to develop, physically, after reaching thirty-five years of age. This statement is about as absurd as that of Dr. Osler, who claims that a man's usefulness is over at forty and that he should be chloroformed at sixty, and laid on the shelf.
Last Saturday (April 29) I celebrated my birthday anniversary (fifty-eight) in my usual way, by riding as many miles on my wheel (before breakfast) as I am years old—or, I should say, years young. You see, I am within two years of the chloroform period, but it would take a mighty good man to lay me on the shelf, or even on my back.
While I am interested in the physical education of the young of both sexes, I am especially interested in the betterment of the physical condition of those persons having reached or having passed the foretieth or fiftieth milestone—an age at which they are liable to let up in their active physical life. I desire to assure them that letting up in daily exercise means letting down in health.
Of course, the average man or woman of middle age does not possess the vigor of youth; however, I think it possible (as in my own case). Yet, as the mind has a most wonderful effect upon the body, I would suggest that the thought of health and strength should be constantly held, and then appropriate exer-
