Keeping fit all the way : $b how to obtain and maintain health, strength and efficiencyCamp, Walter
Science
Keeping fit all the way : $b how to obtain and maintain health, strength and efficiency
Camp, Walter
Hygiene; Physical education and training
By the time he has spent a day or two there and has found that, in spite
of the three courses open, it is wise to post his time the day before or
he is likely to kick his heels around the first tee for a couple of
hours before he can get away, and when he looks over the crowded
dining-room at night--well, he comes to the conclusion that most of the
school have deserted and are playing truant, too!
THE GOSPEL OF FRESH AIR
A generation ago the people who preached the good gospel of fresh air
were still viewed askance, although the new doctrine had begun to make
some impression. The early settlers in this country lived an outdoor
life perforce, and undoubtedly found all the excitement of a football
game in fighting the Indians; consequently, they attained proper
physical development. The descendants of these settlers still retained a
good deal of the outdoor habit, but in the third generation the actual
drift city-ward began. This meant the absence of incentives to outdoor
exercise, so far as life and the pursuit of happiness were concerned.
Hence, it became necessary to preach the gospel of fresh air.
"Oh, the joy with which the air is rife," sang Adams Lindsay Gordon, one
of the early preachers of this doctrine, and to-day thousands and tens
of thousands are appreciating the truth of the saying. Not alone the boy
at school or college with his football, baseball, and rowing, but the
middle-aged man with his golf and tennis, and the old man tramping
through the woods with the rod and gun, as he used to do thirty years
ago, and as he will do to the end--all these know what fresh air means.
Sunshine, through the medium of golf, has come to the life of thousands
of middle-aged wrecks formerly tied to an office chair. No one can
estimate the number of lives, growing aged by confinement in close
rooms, by lack of exercise, and by the want of cheerful interest in
something beside the amassing of dollars and cents, that have been saved
and rendered happy through the introduction of this grand sport whose
courses now dot the country from Maine to California, from the top of
Michigan to the end of Florida.
Twenty years ago in this country a man who came to his office in a golf
suit would have been regarded as demented, to say the least. To-day the
head of the house in many a large business refuses to permit anything to
interfere with his Saturday on the links. And this means that he and all
the officers in the departments under him, instead of viewing with
concern the interest of the men in outdoor sports--their devotion to
baseball and football, to tennis, golf, and track athletics--are glad
and willing that the great outdoors should have a real place in their
lives. It is good business policy.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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