Looking at the benefit daily exercise brought in the instances mentioned, would it not be well for every man who begins to feel his age to at once adopt some equally moderate and sensible course of daily exercise, and to enter on it with a good share of his own former energy and vigor? He does not need to live in the country to effect it, nor in the city. He can readily secure the few bits of apparatus suggested elsewhere[L] for his own home, wherever that home is, and so take care of his arms and chest. For foot-work there is always the road. Is it not worth while to make the effort? He can begin very mildly, and yet in a month reach quite a creditable degree of activity, and then keep that up. And if, as Mr. Bryant did, he should last till well past eighty, and, like him, keep free from deafness and dimness of vision, from stiffness and shortness of breath, from gout, rheumatism, paralysis, and other senile ailments, as he put it himself, "without the usual infirmities of old age"--indeed, with his "strength, activity, and bodily faculties generally in pretty good preservation," and all that time could attend promptly to all the daily duties of an active business as he did, as Vanderbilt did, as Palmerston did, as Thiers did--is not the effort truly worth the making? And who knows what he can do till he tries? FOOTNOTES: [K] See page 240. [L] See page 91. CHAPTER XI. HALF-TRAINED FIREMEN AND POLICE. There are two classes of men in our cities and larger towns who, more than almost any others, need daily and systematic bodily exercise, in order to make them efficient for their duties, and something like what men in their lines ought to be. In times of peace they do in many ways what the army does for the whole country in war-time--they protect life and property. These are the police and firemen.