Part 15 (2/2)

Telephoning is quicker than traveling. No one ”runs for a doctor.”

Our houses have electric washers, electric irons and many other labor-saving devices.

Even the farmer has his telephone, his auto, his riding plow, his milking machine and his cream separator.

In the stores the cash boy has disappeared, the cash carrier takes the money to a girl who sits, a machine makes the change, another machine does her mathematics.

The modern idea of efficiency puts a premium on the sedentary feature of occupations and employees are frequently automatons that sit.

The business man sits at his desk, sits in a comfortable automobile as he goes home, sits at the dinner table and sits all evening at the theater, or at the card table. It is sit, sit, sit until he gets a big abdomen, a puffy skin and a bad liver.

He tries to counteract this with forced exercise in a gymnasium or a couple of hours golfing a week. Very likely his golfing is more interesting because of the side bets, than because of the exercise.

We are losing out on the natural, pleasurable, and practical exercises, mixed in the right proportions to promote physical poise and health.

Things are too easy, luxury and comfort too teasing, for the ordinary mortal to resist, and the great mob sits or rides hundreds of times when they should stand or walk.

When my objective point is five or six blocks I walk and I think on the way. I probably get in two to four miles of walking every day, which my friends would save by riding in the street cars or autos.

I walk to my office every morning, a distance of nearly four miles.

I walk alone, so I may relax and not require conscious effort as is the case when one walks with another.

That morning walk prevents me reading slush and worthless news and relieves me of the necessity of talking and using up nerve energy.

I get the worth-while news from my paper by the headlines and by the trained ability to separate the wheat from the chaff.

I just feel fine all the time and it's because I get to bed early, sleep plenty, exercise naturally, think properly and get the four great body-builders in plenty: air, water, suns.h.i.+ne, food; and the other four great health-makers which are: good thought, good exercise, good rest, and good cheer.

The great crowd aims at ease and so the business man sits and loses out on the exercise his body and mind must have, and therefore the great crowd pays tribute to doctors, sanitariums, rest cures, fake tonics, worthless medicines, freakish diet fads, and crazy cults, isms, and discoveries, that claim to bring health by the easy, lazy, sitting, comfortable route.

Believe me, dear reader, it is not in the cards to play the game of health that way. There ”aint no sich animal” said the ruben as he saw the giraffe in the circus, and likewise there ”aint no sich thing” as health and happiness for the man who persistently antagonizes nature, and hunts ease where exercise is demanded.

The law of compensation is inexorable in its demand that you have to pay for what you get, and that you can't get worth-while things by worthless plans.

You must exercise enough to balance things, to clear the system, to preserve your strength; it doesn't take much time.

IN THE BIG WOODS

A Grand, Glorious, Restful Recreation

This afternoon I am sitting on a glacial rock in the forest at the foot of Mount Shasta. A beautiful spot to rest and a glorious book of nature to read.

A canopy of deepest blue sky above, with suns.h.i.+ne unstopped by clouds.

<script>