Weekly Trinity journal., 1869-06-05
Outdoor Exercise.

The world is slowly coming to its senses; men
are beginning to get tired of so much work and
so little play. We have all gone such while
without laughter, without healthful sports, with
out good genial fun, our faces have grown so
dreadfnlly long with trying to counterfeit the
feeling tha not truly belong to nature,
and we ha. allen into such a miserable habit
of shufHing and sniyeiling about "duty," and
"morals, and "culture," and all those other
nice things, that nobody really understands by
themselves, that all the native manhood and
womanhood is getting squeezed out of US, and
we pretend to be the most ascetically good and
happy people on the face of the earth.
Rather than this, we say the Germans pipe
and lager-bier. anything, for the sake of a
change. These rules oppress and perpex us.
These moral limits hinder and fret US terribly.
Let US drive away this pecked-up, melancholy
snivelling formalty, sitter than any stif-starched
ruff of the olden time, and try once more and be
natural.
You may look the world over, up stairs and
down stairs, and you will only have to confess
at last that nature knows how to give limits bet
ter than know how to lay down laws.
What we set out to speak of, however, is the
need that all men and women have of plenty
of exercise in the open air. This is the grand
invigorator. 1t will prolong life till one is ready
to get sick of it and cry out, enough The
healthy, well-knit, robust and thoroughly well
men we meet on the streets from one day to an
other, can be counted on the ends of the fingers.
But the walks are crowded with persons with
round shoulders, stoops, slender limbs, pale and
supplcating faces, fading eyesight and listless
gait. These are the men of the times. They
number the most of any. They are the ones
who do the voting shape the destiny of the
State and Nation pass judgment on the lives
and fortunes of their neighbors and fellow -citi-
zens; and represent (after the peculiar fashion
they do) the giant forces of this magnificent
country which is called America.
| Some time ago our ministers and students con-
sidered it was fine affair to have pale face
and thin white hands. If they were hollow
chested, then so much the better. If their eyes
were fading, like bright light slowly going out
they felt that all the sentimental young ladies
were looking at them with II wonderful degree
of sympathy, and perhaps something else. Til
| by-and-by disease came to be quite fashionable
thing, and dyspepsia was exactly the ear-marl
of poet, divine, or gentleman
We have grown sick of this stuff. Give u
some of your ''robustious fellows rather mel
who can digest hearty meal run race will
deer jump all the fences in the land shou
like stag-hunter to his hounds; and strike t
blow with his fist, like blacksmith.
Our people all too unhappy, and just be-
cause they don't eat, drink sleep, and laugh as
they ought to. They need to stand upright, to
look brawny, and to hold up proud heads on
manly shoulders. Heath is the one thing they
haven't got. 1t is to be had by the seeking, but
Nature only laughs at those who foolishly expect
her rewards, without submitting to her condi-
tions.
The great men of the world, and the noble
men, ought to be the healthest men and this
would make in reality the divinest We love to
think of such magnificent specimens as Washing
ton, Franklin, Jefferson, Robert Burns, John
Wilson, Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, Colonel
Benton, and the rest of that noble school. They
exercised continually in the open air Their
sports healthy ones. Their labors carried
them into the fields, the woods, and over the
mountains. And souls allied to such bodies
teould not be other than healthy souls. There
never was anything morbid about them. If
there had been, if some of them had been the
feeble folk our literary Een, many of them,
delight to be esteemed, Heaven only knows what
sort of laws and constitutions we might have
been living unhappily under to-day. Their ex-
ample shames the livid faces and fat chests OF
our modern men, and we think of them only
with regret that fine race has SO soon passed
away.