Page:The Galaxy, Volume 6.djvu/576

542 four hundred of these muscles overlie his bones, and they are permeated by the finest and most delicate nerves, which carry to the muscles the message of the mind. These muscles are fed by the good red blood whose pulse beats seventy times a minute, carrying strength and courage. This good red blood is provided by the food we eat, which a wonderful stomach, full of intelligence, seizes and elaborates in a most subtle and mysterious way into that which makes blood; which makes, also, brain, and nerve, and muscle.

At this point, then, we find that a very important part of man is his muscular system, and that these four hundred most varied and capable muscles are adapted to work—indeed, are, apparently, given to man to be used. It is not plausible that all this muscle power is provided merely to lift the food to the mouth, merely to walk out to see a sight. The hand—that most wonderful member, which no other created animal has—it does not seem likely that it was so cunningly fashioned merely to wear a Parisian glove.

We see, then, that the first and greatest business of man is to provide himself with food; that the earth gives this to him as the return for his work; that his four hundred muscles are given to him expressly that he may use them in work. I affirm, then, that work is not a curse, but, on the contrary, is one of the greatest blessings possible to man. I affirm, too, that there is no pleasure so great as that which comes from the consciousness of work well done, well paid and well praised. No repose is equal to that which comes from a well-directed use of all the powers of man, of which the muscles are second to none. Men who do not do bodily work never are and never can be well, neither can they be content. They cannot be well, because the muscles must, by action, use up the food we eat, or the system will become choked and diseased. This action of the muscles must also set in motion the great skin system, which, with its seven millions of pores, and its twenty-eight miles of spiral vessels, should carry off, in invisible perspiration, much which the body no longer needs, and which ought not to be forced back upon the lungs and other internal organs to clog and impair them. Ladies, the world over, fancy it is best to try to live without bodily work, that it is misery to perspire; they are always sick. Scholars attempt it; they are pale, and weak, and dyspeptic. Rich men attempt it; they go up and down the earth in search of health, which they can never find. Mankind, as a mass, yet believe they can ignore and contemn the plainest laws of their nature, and can be made whole by some hocuspocus which a druggist will put into their stomachs. Marvellous simplicity! Wonderful faith! Hardly equalled by the delusions of the good old past, when men fancied they could be bewitched by the glance of the "evil eye," or be cursed by a stone to be found in a toad's head. It remains to be said here, once more, that health and strength are to be had only from good air, good food, good water, and a proper use of all the faculties, including muscle as well as mind. And the great and good physician is he who knows how to assist the sick man to get back to these when he has once forsaken them.

Nor can man be content or easy in his mind, except by a proper exercise of the body in the shape of work; and I beg leave to suggest here that these common truths apply to both sexes, only that woman needs and should have less bodily work than man, because her great function of renewing the race