224 SPORT INDEED 



likely place to find it." "Waggery on such a serious 

 subject may seem to the reader like fiddling at a 

 funeral. If his mind, however, should be at all per- 

 turbed with fears for the result of my future en- 

 counters with lumbago, I will set it at rest at once. 

 That disease has no terrors for me now. I know so 

 well how to master it that it becomes in my hands as 

 docile as a well-trained horse. It no longer runs away 

 with me. You ask me how I manage it ? I will tell 

 you. Should the disease catch me in the forest, I take 

 the cure at once upon myself. I have abandoned my 

 old method of sending forty or fifty miles for a 

 doctor, for the reason that while I waited for the 

 " carer of bodies " to make his appearance the lumbago 

 was busy fixing its claws more firmly in my back. 

 My new method is this : exercise, and plenty of it, 

 and the more violent the exercise, the more effective 

 it will be. I generally open the ball by trying how 

 far or how high I can jump. There is not much fun 

 in this, for at each jump your back feels as if it had 

 been split open. After the jumping I take a canoe 

 and paddle it for an hour or two. Then I pick out a 

 road, and this, to be of service, should run to the top 

 of some high ridge. The worse the road is, the better 

 it is for the purpose. It should be full of windfalls, 

 soft wet places, and plenty of rocks a road, in fact, 

 where even a well man would soon grow weary of 

 slipping and sliding and crawling over and under the 



