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bad. The athlete and the Alpine climber know it well. 

 It is proverbial that the navvy, who is said to eat 

 enormously with a view to keeping up his strength, is 

 worth nothing at all in the way of work by the time he is 

 forty. Nowhere are gout and rheumatism so prevalent, 

 in spite of the beauty of the climate, as in Australia, 

 where meat is cheap, and people live principally upon it. 

 I maintain that if more, and more decided, abstinence 

 were enjoined, there would be no necessity for the 

 number of hours that are now wasted in exercise. Mr. 

 John Morley, in a recent speech to some schools, refers 

 to this point. He says : ' Is there not a little too much 

 addiction to pleasure nowadays? Do not young men 

 attend rather more to their athletics and sports than is 

 wholly good? This was what had been said: In 

 Germany, young men who were going into the family 

 business travelled and acquired languages, and learnt to 

 know the tastes and habits of the natives. In England 

 the sons of the house devoted themselves to pleasure to 

 billiards, the theatre, sport, and so on. In Germany the 

 father said, " Thank God I have a son ! " In England 

 the son said, " Thank God I have a father ! " Mr. 

 Morley wound up, after saying that those who worked 

 hard ought to have pleasure, as follows : ' There was no 

 doubt, taking the country as a whole, that pleasure and 

 sport were now absorbing an amount of time and mental 

 occupation which must block out some other objects to 

 which it would be well if men and women paid atten- 

 tion.' The way to diminish exercise without loss of 

 health is by the very economical method of diminishing 

 food, especially food of that kind which is well known to 

 increase muscle. From the little I know of French 

 schools it seems to me that the exercise there is very 

 inadequate. We are told that Germany is our successful 

 rival in many forms of physical prowess and staying power, 



