Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 19.djvu/32

22 vices. He can't afford to be vicious: sensuality weakens; physical vigor is a stock-in-trade; the fierceness of competition compels him to use every advantage. For the same reason a training oarsman is generally an exemplar of all manly virtues; to him experience has demonstrated the temporal disadvantages of vice, an argument whose cogency somehow conquers objections that resist the most eloquent argumenta ad fidem. Moreover, such virtues with a business purpose are liable to become habits. If we could keep a record of the longevity of our university crews, we would probably find that the victors outlive the often vanquished; the champions of Olympia (with the exception of the cestus-fighters) generally attained to a good old age.

It is, indeed, a pity that oar-contests should be confined to our lakeshore cities and a few college towns; as an athletic exercise rowing is out and out superior to ball-playing and skating, and a sovereign remedy for many disorders of the respiratory organs. Venice has all the topographical characteristics of a consumption town—stagnant lagoons, damp buildings, dark and narrow streets—and yet the lower classes of her population are remarkably free from pulmonary affections—they have a gondolier in nearly every family. The watermen of the Thames, too, are generally long-lived, in spite of being so much exposed to wet and cold. If I had to limit a child to two kinds of outdoor exercises, I would choose running and rowing: the one does for the legs and the stomach what the other does for the arms and the lungs.

It is said that Cyrus advised his countrymen "never to eat but after labor," and, as a general rule, the best time for out-door exercise is certainly rather before than after meals; but gymnastics of the heroic kind may induce a degree of fatigue which decreases the appetite instead of stimulating it, and in summer it is by far the best plan to take the last meal in the afternoon, and postpone athletic sports to the cooler hours of the evening. In moonlit nights, out-door games may be continued for several hours after sunset. A nearly infallible receipt for pleasant dreams is a light supper, followed by competitive gymnastics in the presence of (somebody's) sisters and cousins. In stress of circumstances, though, the fair witnesses can be dispensed with. Even an in-door gymnasium will answer the main purpose; it is the relaxation of the strained sinews which makes rest sweet; the soul seems to revel in a conscious sense of health to come. It is a fact that a man may be "too tired to sleep"; but that sort of insomnia is always a sign of general debility. Our latter-day sports are not likely to hurt a healthy boy through excess of exercise. We hear of people having "killed themselves with hard work"; but, if their habits were otherwise correct and their diet not altogether insufficient, they must have worked hard indeed, and with suicidal intent, I am tempted to say, as we have no single word for Lebensmüde—the reckless contempt of life which can make men deaf to the voice of their physical conscience.