AN CITIZEN'S CREED

I believe that a nation should be made up of people who individually
possess clean, strong bodies and pure minds; who have respect for their
own rights and the rights of others and possess the courage and strength
to redress wrongs; and, finally, in whom self-consciousness is
sufficiently powerful to preserve these qualities. I believe in
education, patriotism, justice, and loyalty. I believe in civil and
religious liberty and in freedom of thought and speech. I believe in
chivalry that protects the weak and preserves veneration and love for
parents, and in the physical strength that makes that chivalry
effective. I believe in that clear thinking and straight speaking which
conquers envy, slander, and fear. I believe in the trilogy of faith,
hope, and charity, and in the dignity of labor; finally, I believe that
through these and education true democracy may come to the world.

Part I

KEEPING FIT ALL THE WAY

CHAPTER I

It has long been a startling fact regarding Americans that so soon as
their school-days were over they largely abandoned athletics; until, in
middle life, finding that they had been controverting the laws of
nature, they took up golf or some other form of physical exercise.

The result of such a custom has been to lower the physical tone of the
race. Golf is a fine form of exercise, but in an exceedingly mild way.
No one claims that it will build up atrophied muscles nor, played in the
ordinary way, that it will induce deep breathing; nor, except in warm
weather, that it will produce any large amount of skin action. Hence it
is easy to imagine the condition of the man who at the end of his
'teens gave up athletics, and then did nothing of a physically exacting
nature until he took up golf. Now if in addition to his pastime and
relaxation he will do something in the way of setting-up exercises to
open up his chest and make his carriage erect, thus enabling his heart
and lungs to have a better chance, he will more than double the
advantages coming from his golf. He will then walk more briskly and will
gain very much in physical condition.

NATURE A HARD MISTRESS

One thing that our middle-aged men, and in fact many of us who have not
yet reached that way mark, have entirely forgotten is that Nature is
very chary of her favors. Our primal mother is just and kind, but she
has little use for the man who neglects her laws. When a man earns his
bread by the