I have often been asked whether in the event of exercising at night it is advisable to take a cold bath afterwards. My reply is:—“certainly.” _Always_ have a cold bath or sponge down after exercising. It will make you feel “as fresh as paint,” improve your appetite, and make the skin clean and firm, and be generally conducive to happiness and good health. Some people tell me that a cold bath immediately before retiring keeps them awake; if that be so, I should advise them to exercise earlier in the day. But the exercise and the cold bath ought to be regarded as inseparable. CHAPTER VII. PHYSICAL CULTURE FOR THE MIDDLE-AGED. It is scarcely necessary for me to say that the benefits to be obtained by conscientiously working upon my system are by no means confined to the young and vigorous. On the contrary, it is particularly suitable for the middle-aged, who are all too apt to suffer from the effects of the period of physical indolence which has succeeded their youthful activity. To such, the system should prove invaluable. It is quite a false notion to suppose that when once youth is passed exercise is no longer necessary. _So long as life lasts, if an individual wants to keep healthy, exercise is just as necessary as food._ It is through neglecting to recognise this that so many men become aged before their time. When a man begins to get into middle life he has a natural tendency to “take things easy.” He lives more luxuriously, devotes more time to the pleasures, of the table, and exerts himself as little as possible. Is it anything to wonder at that his health suffers, that he grows fat and flabby, and that his digestive apparatus quickly gets out of gear? If in his youth he has been an athlete the more will his changed mode of life tell upon him; it is indeed better never to have exercised at all than to exercise for a few years and then drop it entirely. It is for this reason we hear of the health of so many athletes failing them at a comparatively early age. And this failure is, as a rule, erroneously ascribed to the effects upon their constitution of their early efforts. Once and again errors in “training” may be responsible for poor health in middle-age, but in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred the complete cessation from active bodily work, combined with the greater indulgence which naturally follows, is alone responsible. Of course, while it is advisable that the middle-aged man should exercise regularly, I must warn him not to do too much. He must remember that what is perfectly safe and prudent at five-and-twenty may be rash and hazardous at fifty; in short, that he, while exercising consistently and steadily, must be careful not to over-tax his powers. If he bears this in mind he will find that the discomforts and ailments which he has perhaps got to regard as natural to his time of life are quickly banished, and that, in spite of his grey beard and thinning hair, it is still “good to be alive.” CHAPTER VIII.