In a sense we all live by our wits and these decline when not properly
fed by our general physical organization. Prize fighters are not the
longest lived people, nor are the professional athletes. Their calling
requires extra building up which would be a positive handicap to the
average man whose manner of life doesn't require this super-development.
In other words, there are intemperate methods of exercising just as
there are of eating and drinking. We may easily go too far. Again, we
can sin just as greatly by not going far enough. There was a time when
men of forty were as worn and old as men of sixty-five and seventy are
today. As a matter of fact, nowadays a half-century mark is no longer a
badge of senility when a man has kept himself fit and treated himself
right.

We all have friends who are pretty well along in years by virtue of
their carefully planned physical training, plus their _cheerful
dispositions_. They are as sprightly and companionable as though they
were many years younger. We should come to know early in life what a
large part _good humor_ plays in _physical fitness_. In previous
chapters hearty laughter was extolled as one of the very best of
exercises. It is an organizer in itself and opens up the heart and lungs
as nothing else will do. It makes the blood go galloping all through the
system. It is one of the best automatic _blood circulators_ in the
business.

Laughter takes the stress off of the mind, and whatever is ahead of us
for the day that seems likely to become a burden is soon turned into an
ordinary circumstance. We smile as we go about doing it.

A friend once said to a banker:

"How do you know when to lend money?"

The banker replied:

"I look a man in the eye and then _I do or I don't_."

The friend said:

"I would like to borrow ten thousand dollars--now!"

"You shall have it, Sir," the banker replied.

This meant that the man who asked for the loan was in a state of
physical and mental preparedness. If he had gone into the banker's
office looking like an animated tombstone he wouldn't have had much of a
chance to borrow the ten thousand. It goes without saying that the
open-faced, hearty fellow inspires confidence. There is nothing coming
to the dried-up, sour chap, and that's what he usually gets. And what we
get is largely a matter of our physical well being. A modern philosopher
observed that "the blues are the product of bad livers"--and there is no
doubt but