This activity among men so far on in years seems surprising. And why? Because, as people get past middle-life, often from becoming engrossed in business, and out of the way of anything to induce them to continue their muscular activity, oftener from increasing caution, and fear that some effort, formerly easy, may now prove hazardous to them, they purposely avoid even ordinary exercise--riding when they might, and indeed ought to, walk, and, instead of walking their six miles a day, and looking after their arms and chests besides, as Bryant did, gradually come to do nothing each day worthy of the name of exercise. Then the joints grow dry and stiff, and snap and crack as they work. The old ease of action is gone, and disinclination takes its place. The man makes up his mind that he is growing old and stiff--often before he is sixty--and that there is no help for that stiffness. Well, letting the machinery alone works a good deal the same whether it is made of iron and steel, and driven by steam, or of flesh and blood and bones, and driven by the human heart. Maclaren cleverly compares this stiffening of the joints to the working of hinges, which, when "left unused and unoiled for any length of time, grate and creak, and move stiffly. The hinges of the human body do just the same thing, and from the same cause; and they not only require frequent oiling to enable them to move easily, but they _are_ oiled every time they are put in motion, _and when they are put in motion only_. The membrane which secretes this oil, and pours it forth over the opposing surfaces of the bones and the overlying ligaments, is stimulated to activity only by the motion of the joint itself." Had Bryant spared himself as most men do, would he have been such a springy, easy walker, and so strong and handy at eighty-four? Does it not look as if the half-hour at the dumb-bells, and chairs, and horizontal bar, and the twelve or fifteen thousand steps which he took each day, had much to do with this spring and activity in such a green old age? Does it not look almost as if he had, half a century ago, read something not unlike the following from Maclaren: "The first course of the system may be freely and almost unconditionally recommended to men throughout what may be called middle life, care being taken to use a bell and bar well within the physical capacity. The best time for this practice is in the early morning, immediately after the bath, and, when regularly taken, it need not extend over more than a few minutes." Whether Bryant had ever seen these rules or not, the bell, the bar, and the morning-time for exercise make a noticeable coincidence.