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HEALTH EXERCISES 451
in their studies; they must keep moving; I want to dash into the street now. At home, after breakfast, I wanted to read my paper leisurely, and then get to my books and work. Yesterday, as some rain began to fall, I felt a leaden cap taken off my brain-pan, and began to speak calmly and reasonably, and not to wish to quit my place." The British athletes who visit us to-day say the same thing of our air.
Safe, Simple, and Cheap Exercise
Happily, too, all the exercise one needs to be strong instead of weak, is simple, easy to do, takes hardly one hour of the twenty-four, costs nothing, and can be done almost anywhere. It has no bound or limit. No man knows all the ways to exercise the body. New ones are being found all the time. And each one fits you to do a little better some kind of work or play.
Do you want, for instance, to know how to be erect of carriage? To walk up as straight as the straightest man you know? Well, the walls of the room you are in are vertical. Now stand with your back against the wall; press your heels, the back of your knees, the small of your back, and the back of your neck, as hard against the wall as you can. The small of your back will not touch it, but it will come nearer to it than usual. You are as straight now as the wall itself. Stand there against it in that way for only three minutes. Somehow you have suddenly become straight. The poke-neck of most men has gone; your head is now on top of your spine, exactly where it belongs. Your chest has expanded, your legs have straightened, and you feel the various straps and muscles all over your body gently pulling you into position, until you wonder how you could have so long gone out of true. While so standing there, do another thing. Take a full, deep breath— as so many have taken who meant to get rid of consumption— set about it, used sensible means, stuck to it, and did it. See how your chest rises; how it expands forward, sideways—in every diameter; how it lifts up in front nearer to your chin than you ever saw it before, or thought it could, and the more |
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