Adams County news. [volume] (Ritzville, Wash.) 1898-1906, 1902-03-12
THE ARMY OF BRAIN WORKERS

Close and long continued confinement
to official duties is fast making an army
of old-young men recruited largely from
those devoting their energies to the care
of business affairs.
All work and no play may not neces.
sarily make Jack dull lad. for there are
no brighter minds than among those who,
spurred on by desire for promotion,
never allow themselves a moments re-
creation in their seemingly tireless ap-
plication to duty.
That taking exercise in some shape or
form, and that for its own health giving
is as indispensable to this class as even
a supply of bread to cat or oxygen to
breathe is one of the many modern doc
trines which from the venturesome theo-
ries of one generation have become the
commonplace of the next.
This is the day of the PHYSICAL cultur-
list, he alone who addresses himself of
choice to the paid visage and the weakly
growth with Come to me, and will
make you strong. will increase by tenth
your ridiculously light weight, will turn
that chest. which no recruiting sergeant
in the height of a great war would dare
to pass. into the 3S.inch thorax of a
grenadier, and add In three months. a
third at least to your, small MUSCULAR
force" But there are those who aver
that often as much is taken away as has
been given; that the. training or hard
work required for proficiency in them is
draft in advance upon the system
against which there is no real set-off.
Medicine looks incredulously askance on
an art which processes to do without
drugs what all drugs in the world are
impotent to active. Is the gymnast, too,
a charlatan-his work Of cure a mere
Penelope's web. three months of wonders
and then three months more in which, as
the dynanometer reveals, the increased
force acquired in the first period oozes
away as fast, or nearly so. as tits gained?
No doubt the secret of the whole matter
lies in the fact that the gymnast goes too
fast. The exaggerated rate of progress
at the commencement points unmistak-
ably to over exertion leading in the nat
ural course of things to equivalent reac-
ton. With all our inherent love of ex-
ercise, too many Of US have the vaguest
notion of the sort of exercise we really
want.
No hard and fast line of profitable or
proftless exercise for all can, we are sure,
be possibly laid down. For two classes
at least, for him who wins his bread by
muscular exertion, and him-heretical
as the assertion may appear to many
who wins his by wear and tear of brain.
exercise for exercises sake is always a
superiority, If not something worse.
Each of these classes in its hour of leis-
ure, requires not exercise, but amuse-
ment-the one to relieve worried muscles
of strain. the other to arrest for. space
expenditure of nervous force, and give
to the system time to recover from ex-
haustion.
1t is simply burning the candle at both
ends for the brain worker under any pre-
text Of expanding the chest and oxyge-
mating the lungs to take hard hours
work in the gymnasium. Open air by
all means. as much oxygen as can be got
without trouble. gentle stroll it may be
every day. but for the rest the summer
holidays. with perfect cessation for the
time of wear and worry. absolute change
of scene. and. after the first day or two.
as much increasing exercise as falls well
within the limits of fatigue. are all that
the brain-worker really wants. And
these he should not deny himself.