Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 15.djvu/801

 the amount of muscular exercise that is requisite for maintaining full and sustained health. By habitual neglect of sufficient exercise the system may and does accommodate itself to such neglect; so that not only may the desire for exercise cease to be a fair measure of its need, but positive exhaustion may attend a much less amount of exercise than is necessary to long continuance of sound health. However strong and well, therefore, a man may feel notwithstanding his neglect of exercise, he ought to remember that he is playing a most dangerous game, and that sooner or later his sin will find him out—either in the form of dyspepsia, liver, kidney, or other disease, which so surely creep upon the offender against Nature's laws of health. According to Dr. Parkes, the amount of exercise that a healthy man ought to take without fatigue is at the least that which is required for raising 150 foot-tons per diem. This, in mere walking, would, in the case of a man of ordinary weight, be represented by a walk of between eight and nine miles along level ground, or one mile up a tolerably steep hill; but it is desirable that the requisite amount of exercise should be obtained without throwing all the work upon one set of muscles. For this reason walking ought to be varied with rowing, riding, active games, and, where practicable, hunting or shooting, which, to those who are fond of sport, constitute the most perfect form of recreative exercise.

Turning next to all the large class of men below the grade of clerks, their possible means of recreation are alike in this—that they must be more or less of a corporate kind. These men depend for their recreation on public institutions, and therefore it is of the first importance to the national health, happiness, morals, and intelligence that no thought, pains, or money should be spared in providing such institutions, adequate in number and competent in character to meet so important and so immense a need. Within the limits of so general an essay it is impossible to do anything like justice to this subject; but I may say a few words on the kinds of institutions that I should most like to recommend.

Every town the size of which is so considerable that green grass and fresh air are not within easy reach of all its inhabitants, ought at any expense to be provided with public parks. In many of our large towns it is now virtually impracticable to provide such parks in central situations; but even suburban parks are infinitely better than no parks at all. Public recreation-grounds having been provided, every inducement ought to be added to attract the people to use them. Gymnasia, boating, cricket and golf implements, lawn-tennis, and tennis-courts, ought all to be supplied at the public expense, so that workingmen and boys might be able to spend their holidays and half-holidays in healthy outdoor amusement without requiring to incur the expense of club subscriptions. Outdoor clubs, however, ought not the less to be encouraged for the sake of the additional inducement which esprit de