long in close proximity to a blazing fire, while a wide-open door admits the blizzards of the mid-winter season; yes their health and longevity is far above the average and might rank with that of gardeners, if they were not obliged to inhale coal-fumes, as well as ice-winds. Their special work, it is true, tends to counteract the effects of the one-sided system of exercise that explains the shortcomings of nine out of ten health-seekers. "Our patients get an immense deal of encouragement to develop the muscles of their motive organs," writes the visitor of a climatic sanitarium; "there are mountain-excursions and forest-excursions, five times a week, and every evening troops of volunteers clamber up a prospect rock to see the sunset and get an appetite for supper. Besides, there is a Kneipp-cure department, and the trots through the wet meadow often take the form of a foot-race. But what are our arms doing all that while? Lifting a half-ounce spoon from plate to mouth or reaching up to take a hat from the rack."
It would be no exaggeration to say that the legs of the average city dweller get a thousand times as much exercise as his arms.
Amateur-blacksmithing, on the Elihu Burritt
