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It was Edmond Rostand who once said that the only Vice was inactivity (l’inertie), the only virtue, enthusiasm. Douglas Fairbanks long ago adopted this as his watchword. But enthusiasm is peculiarly a trait of youth. How keep this youthful enthusiasm? The answer to this question is the whole subject of Fairbanks’s new book, Youth Points the Way. “You may have all the machinery for a successful life,” says the actor, “education, health, intellect, and still fail to find the true zest in life because your machinery lacks the vital electric spark—enthusiasm.” It is necessary to think hard, work hard, play hard and live enthusiastically. Fresh air and exercise are “the only medicine I ever take.” Mr. Fairbanks rises in time to see the sun rise and chases his breakfast to the top of a California mountain. “Keep in motion; that is the main thing, and it matters little whether you do stunts on a flying ring or only chin yourself on an upper berth.”
How is a young man to get a start in life? That, Douglas Fairbanks says, depends entirely on what sort of a person he is; but one thing he must do, “dive in.” Fairbanks himself, on graduating from college, borrowed a thousand dollars and went to Europe. His start in life came through the strenuous way he had to work to pay that money back.
Youth Points the Way is the book of a man who has kept in motion and who believes that to cease moving is to die. Some people stop after failure, some after success. Fairbanks says that either is fatal. Were he writing a scientific treatise, and not a popular, partly autobiographical, inspirational book with many anecdotes and considerable humor, he could find very important evidence in the work of physicists, physiologists, and others to prove that he is right.
Perhaps you think that so much motion will disturb your blood pressure (of which you have heard a good deal, and about which you are secretly worried at times). Well, no; at least, only beneficially. If you would like to know the truth about blood pressure—the subject of much ignorance and much uninformed discussion—you may as well read the new book by Lewellys F. Barker, M.D., LL.D., and Norman Brown Cole, M.D. Although Drs. Barker and Cole are members of the Johns Hopkins faculty, their book is equally serviceable for the physician and the general reader. Technical expressions are avoided, and a very complete glossary helps the ordinary reader where a medical name must be used for exactness. But the book should remove all sorts of misconceptions. Blood pressure is just as normal as breathing. It has certain general averages related to age and condition; marked departures from these are the danger signal. Heredity, the wear and tear of modern life, the use of alcohol, tobacco and coffee may produce exceptional blood pressures. Development of high blood pressure is a process rather than a disease; the symptoms develop rather late in its course; and preventive measures must be taken early. Blood Pressure gives, in plain, comprehensible English, the information that anyone interested in longevity, or even in normal length of life, would like to have.