The Washington herald. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1906-1939, 1913-05-11
Fourth Section.
TRAINING THE BODY.

When Obliged to live in cities, / for a
long time found that boxing and wrest-
ling enabled me to get good deal OF
exercise in condensed and attractive
form. / was reluctantly obliged to aban-
don the wrestling earliest. When l be-
came Governor, the champion middle
be I'm Albany, and / got him to come
round three or four afternoons a week.
Incidentally I may mention that his pres
ence caused me difficulty with the
Comptroller, who refused to audit a bill
I put in for a wrestling-mat, explaining
that / could have a billiard-table, bill
lizards being recognized as a proper Cub
ernatorial amusement, but that a wrest-
ling-mat symbolized something unusual
and unheard Of and could not be per-
mitted.
The middle-weight champion was Of
course so much better than ! was that
he could not only take care of himself
but of me too and see that I was not
hurt-for wrestling Is a much more vio-
lent amusement than boxing. But after
a couple Of months he had to go away,
and he left as substitute good-hum-
ored, stalwart professional oarsman. The
oarsman turned out to know very little
about wrestling. He could not even take
BY the end of our second afternoon one
of his long ribs had ben caved in and
two of my short ribs badly damaged, and
my left shoulder-blade so nearly showed
out of place that ii cracked. He was
nearly as pleased as ! was when / told
him I thought we would "vote the war
failure and abandon wrestling.
After that / took UP boxing again.
While President / used to box with some
Of al
with Gen. Wood. After a few years I
had to abandon boxing as well as wrest-
ling. for in one bout a young captain of
artillery cross-countered me on the eye,
and the blow smashed the little blood
vessels. Fortunately il was my left eye,
but 1.-THE sight has been dim ever since,
and if it had been the right eye I should
have been entirely unable to shoot. Ac-
cordingly thought ii better to acknowl-
edge that / had become an elderly man
and would have to stop boxing. I then
took up jiu-jitsu for year or two.
When I was in the Legislature and was
working very hard, with little chance OF
getting out Of doors, all the exercise /
got was boxing and wrestling. young
fellow turned UP who was a second-rate
prize-fighter, the son of one of my old
boxing teachers. For several weeks had
him come round to my rooms in the
half an hour. Then he suddenly stopped,
and some days later / received letter
of woe from him from the Jail. l found
that he was by profession a burglar, and
merely followed boxing as the amuse-
ment of his lighter moments, or when
business was slack.
Grows Fcnd Of the ''PuEs."
Naturally, being fond Of boxing. grew
to know a good many prize-hghters, and
to most of those / knew 1 grew genuinely
attached. I have never been able to
sympathize with the outcry against prize
fighters. The only objection 1 have to
the prize ring is the crookedness that has
attended its commercial development.
Outside of this regard boxing, whether
professional or amateur, as a first-class
sport, and / do not regard ii as brutaliz-
ing.
OF course matches can be conducted
Under conditions that make them brutaliz-
ing. But this is true of football games
and of most other rough and vigorous
sports. Most certainly prize-fighting is
not half as brutalizing Or demoralizing
as many forms of big business and of the
legal work carried on in connection with
big business.
Powerful, vigorous men Of strong ami
NAL development must have some way
i'm which their animal spirits can find
vent. When 1 was Police Commissioner
/ found land Jacob Riis will back me up in
this that the establishment of boxing
club in tough neighborhood always tend
ed to do away with knitting and gum
fighting among the young fellows who
would otherwise have been in murderous
gangs. Many of these young fellows were
not naturally criminals at all, but they
had to have some outlet for their ac-
tivities.
In the same way I have always regard
ed boxing as a first-class sport to en-
courage in the Young Mems Christian
Association. / do not like to see young
Christians with shoulders that slope like
champagne bottle OF course boxing
should be encouraged in the army and
navy. ] was first drawn to two naval
chaplains, Fathers Chadwick and Rainey.
by finding that each of them had bought