cine. And
people don't take medicine until they have to. And for some strange
reason they won't take this kind even then unless some doctor prescribes
it in consideration of the payment of a good sized fee. Why is it?
Simply because we prize things in proportion to their cost?
Now, we want these results and even better ones. And we don't want to
pay the doctor's fees for this or any other kind of medicine in order to
get them. What are we going to do about it? Isn't there some sugar
coating that we can put on to these physical exercise pills to make them
a little more palatable? Can't we in some way make ourselves believe
that we are eating candy instead of taking quinine? For you know that we
grown-ups have not lost all our powers of imagination. How often we play
make believe, even yet! I'll tell you what we can do. Let's have this
same physical exercise idea but introduce into it the element of sport
which Webster defines as "that which diverts and makes mirth." Let's do
these stunts "for the fun of it" instead of as a medicine. We'll get the
results, just the same, and thus get double pay for our pains. I fancy
that the skiing and the skating, the snow-shoeing and the curling of
which we are to hear, all have that element tucked away somewhere in
their anatomy.
But you may ask me what more there is than the results already mentioned
to be gotten from these physical exercises, if we succeed in covering up
the quinine with Mr. Webster's molasses. I've used Indian clubs and dumb
bells by the hour; I've walked to the University in season and out of
season; I've even run around the house--and as a result have experienced
the exhilaration that comes from such vigorous discipline. I've been
better for it, physically, and therefore, of course, mentally. More
oxygen, better blood, firmer bodily tissue including better nourished
brain cells, have done their beneficent work. But yet, as I look back
and see myself going thru these various maneuvers, I am fully confident
of the fact that all this time I was also doing something else--that my
poor brain cells, which really needed recuperation more than any other
part of my body, that these brain cells were still at work, that I was
all the time carrying on a more or less strenuous train of thought as
exhaustive as tho I were seated in my study chair, or standing before my
class in the recitation room. More than one lecture, or address, have I
worked out while walking to and fr
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