Need of Athletics.

A late issue of the Boston Herald contained an interesting editorial on the need of exercise among the middle aged men of our land, and some quotations may be of interest:

Athletics are regarded as good for young men and young women who are pursuing a course of study, and it is even conceded that athletics should become a part of the student course, in which proficiency counts as much as success in mathematics or in the languages. At Amherst College athletics are put upon this broad and high basis, and the result is that every Amherst graduate is turned out a well developed young man, with a physical organization which will sustain him in his intellectual work. But the majority of men in middle life today were not brought up on athletics in their youth. They did not ride bicycles or enjoy the activity and spirit of the saddle, and they have never done much to keep a sound mind in a sound body. The almost total neglect of bodily exercise among the men of one's acquaintance is characteristic of our own generation, and it would be hard to estimate the number of men in the prime of life whose death is attributed by the verdict of the physician to what is commonly called overwork-which means the use of the mental faculties at the expense of the whole vital system. There is no time in a man's life when he can let up from this care for the body. We are told to care for our souls but he who cares for his soul and neglects his body, overlooks the prime conditions of soul service. The man who enters the counting room without exercise in the morning, and who returns to his home at night without resorting to any physical exhilaration by which his whole muscular power shall be fully tested, does constant violence to his nature; and if, by smoking or drinking or social excitement, he puts the spars into his physical life, he is just so far shortening his existence in the world by using up vital forces which might otherwise prolong it. It is often more important after forty that a man should arrange for constant and regular physical exercise than it is in the years when his physical powers are in the freshness of their early vigor; and the strain which men put upon themselves in active business or professional life is now so great that, unless they faithfully develop their physical resources as a matter of fidelity to their own selves, they constantly impair their vitality and consume their strength. With all that is said for athletics among the younger men it is believed that their necessity among the older men is very imperfectly understood, and that the physical exercise of men in middle life might be increased many fold without bringing them up to the standard of a well balanced physical and mental life.