There is, perhaps, nothing that has been carried to a greater extreme of tomfoolery than this question of how to keep the muscles of the body active and alive.

The caged animal solves this problem by walking back and forth in his cage. Possibly if he had dumbbells he would use them, or he might be induced to work some kind of "apparatus," but even if he could be trained to do this, I doubt very much whether his problem would be solved better than he attempts to solve it by his restless walking.

No better exercise has been invented than walking, unless it is running. The "physical strainer" who spends his time in some stuffy room going through a lot of fool contortions, when he might take a brisk hour's walk out in the open air, may succeed in raising "bumps of muscles" on his carcass, but this does not necessarily mean that he has increased his vitality or lengthened his life.

Here is the idea: one thing that is abnormal can not be corrected by adding another abnormal and unnatural thing to it.

The people who live an indoor, inactive life, that so many live; the office workers (who frequently work the other workers), and the ladies and gents who don't need to work at all, may hope to escape the penalty of their inactivity along productive lines by resorting to "artificial" work. They may take the "absent work" treatment; that is, they may bend their weak backs and grasp an imaginary weight and lift it above their heads, but it isn't half the real exercise that a ditch-digger gets by actually throwing a shovelful of dirt up on the bank; neither is it as dignified, for the ditch-digger is doing something useful while this "absent worker" is simply trying to fool himself, and succeeding admirably.

There is nothing like the real thing. No man or woman who is not physically injured and thus incapacitated, should go through life without actually doing useful physical labor. I do not mean by this that every man should be a ditch-digger; in fact, I do not believe in any man doing this kind of labor, that can be performed by machinery better. I have no objection at all to a machine taking the place of a man; what I'm kicking about is this idea of a man making a machine of himself.

Some day a lot of people are going to wake up and realize that this idea of forcing part of the people to do all the useful productive labor, while another part does no labor at all, has resulted in great injury to both. The manual laborers being forced to do much more than their rightful share, and much more than they ought to do, drain their vitality and shorten their lives, while the so-called "brain workers" by doing no work, suffer from the lack of healthful physical exercise.

Every man and woman should be both a brain worker and a manual worker, and until a system of industry is worked out that combines the two, - and this is altogether possible, - we will have overworked and underworked human beings; and the underworked will probably continue to devise ways and means of getting their normal exercise in more or less abnormal fashions.

Under present conditions I shall not blame any one for not wanting to go down in the ditch, so to speak. Say what we wish about the "horny-handed sons of toil," we all know that this is but political buncombe, and that the man who does useful hard manual labor today is looked down upon by the brain workers, as they in turn are scorned by the few who have succeeded in getting out of all work and are living on the backs of the many (in blissful ignorance of the fact that old Mother Nature is not going to permit that sort of thing to go on indefinitely, and sometime they are going to get an awful bump).

If you really are a "brain worker," don't continue to work your alleged brain for "exercise," by lifting tons of imaginary nothing. If you want to lift, go right out in the open air some place and lift something real; there is many a tired, fagged-out working man who would be pleased to have you "spell" him for a time - it wouldn't take you long to get all you want of it. But if you refuse to do this, and you are convinced that you need exercise, then get it in some sensible fashion.

As before stated, walking is one of the very best forms of physical exercise. Don't drag along one foot after another, but strike a good brisk pace, breathing copiously, and hike for the country as fast as your legs will carry you.

At least once a day your entire system should be vitalized by some exercise that will send the blood tingling through your veins, and a little vigorous "run on the bank" - sand bank - will accomplish this trick in fine order, and won't cost you a cent for "apparatus" either.

Outdoor games are good; but here, again, don't take the "absent" treatment. I never could understand how people get so much joy out of seeing the "other fellow" play a game, - the fan is a joke to me. If there is anything "doing," I want to be one of the doers, not sit around like a hump on a log and yell my fool head off watching the "other fellow" have a good time out on the diamond - that is, I suppose they have a good time, though I surmise that this all play and no work is as bad for "Jack" as the idea of all work and no play. You can't commercialize sport without taking the sport out of it.

This is just another evidence of the absurdity of our present way of doing things. Some fellows get all of the play in such large "chunks" that it makes "work" out of it, while the rest of us don't get a chance to bat a ball, or play tennis, or play at all, - we just sit around and watch, and sometimes even pay good money to do that.

I'd like to see the "professional sport" driven out of business, and a new era inaugurated where all the people would have a chance to play healthful outdoor games. Every city, town, and school district should have its public playgrounds, and every citizen should be something of an amateur athlete at putting the shot, jumping, running, ball playing, or something. These playgrounds should be either grass covered, sprinkled or oiled, so no player would breathe dust, the great destroyer of human life.

Between honest, hard, manual labor, under right conditions, and walking, running, and healthful outdoor sports the body can get plenty of normal exercise without apparatus of any kind, and without studying out some new kind of "motion" to keep your liver working. Just be natural in your exercise and you will make no mistake, though special exercises may be devised for special cases of disease, and are here proper and far better than "medicine."

Much of what passes for physical training is simply physical straining; it is the using up of surplus vitality that should be used in old age. It's all right to be strong, but there is such a thing as being too strong; any good healthy billy goat is a proof of that, and the early demise of many of our professional athletes is another proof.

The muscles should be soft, flexible, and evenly developed; hard, "bunchy" muscles are not desirable, and herein is the danger in the usual methods of special training. Walking is a perfect exercise. Horseback riding is fine - for the horse, gives him just the exercise he needs - and is also good for the man, but not so good as walking, but it beats staying inside and punching a bag or pulling an "imaginary" row-boat across an "imaginary" lake; even automobiling beats that, especially so if you are the driver and can succeed in occasionally bursting a tire. There are some kinds of "blow-outs" that are not altogether pleasant - but they are very good for weak backs.

In conclusion, take this as good advice: get out in the open air as much as you possibly can and walk several miles every day, not forgetting to breathe copiously, and you will never feel the need of "apparatus" or special instructions about bobbing up and down or wiggling sidewise or anything of that sort. Or play games, for it is natural for men to play games; if you don't think so, watch the monkeys, - and this isn't intended as a reflection on your ancestors. If men came from monkeys (which I do not believe), they have come a long ways from them, and it wouldn't hurt them much to retrace some of their steps. I consider that the poor monkey is very often abused by this common insinuation; it is not fair, and I hereby cast my hat in the ring as the monkeys' champion. Until men live as naturally as monkeys do, they have no right to boast of any superiority, and until they straighten out their economic relations and divide the work so that each will do some healthful manual labor, human beings have some things yet to learn from their little brothers who live in the woods, and who never dream of monopolizing the coconut crop or building fences around nature's food supply.