WHY MEN SHOULD EXERCISE DAILY
What a lesson he might have taken from his illustrious relative of to-day; one of the conceded leaders of the American Bar; who perhaps had his very case in mind, when, in February, 1898, he said to the Chicago Bar Association, at a complimentary dinner they gave him:
"When I look round me on this great company of busy and successful lawyers, resting for a moment from their never-ending labors; when I study the lines which time has traced upon their features, I can easily see that success in our profession rests everywhere upon the same foundation. It is the same old story of the sound mind and the honest heart in the sound body. The sound body is at the bottom of it all. The stomach is indeed the key of all professional eminence. If that goes back on you, you might as well throw up your sponge. And sleep without worry must cherish and nourish it all the time."
Nor did he give too much importance to that same good friend, the stomach. He need not have gone back to his father's renowned cousin for proof of what a neglected stomach will do. The proof was there; at the very door of the great city whose Bar he was addressing. Referring to a sad and startling experience which had shocked the nation, President Harper said:
"Of the five deaths that have occurred at Chicago University in five years, three may be attributed directly to starvation."
And he well added:
"The university is turning out men of strong intelligence, but wreak bodies. Some of them are moral and intellectual dyspeptics. It cannot be expected that they will be of much use in the world. If the body is not properly nourished, the mind will refuse to act as it should. I therefore hold that it is as necessary to take care of and cultivate the one as the other."
Nor is he the only one of our eminent educators who is awake to the need of an educated body, as well as
61
