The same paper also contained the following:
"REMINISCENCES OF A FORMER BUSINESS ASSOCIATE.
"Mr. William G. Boggs, who knew Mr. Bryant intimately for many years, has given the following reminiscences to a representative of the Evening Post:
"'During the forty years that I have known him, Mr. Bryant has never been ill—never been confined to his bed, except on the occasion of his last accident. His health has always been good.
"'Mr. Bryant was a great walker. In earlier years he would think nothing of walking to Paterson Falls and back, with Alfred Pell and James Lawson, after office hours. He always walked from his home to his place of business, even in his eighty-fourth year. At first he wouldn't ride in the elevator. He would never wait for it, if it was not ready for the ascent immediately on his arrival in the building. Of gymnastic exercises he was very fond. Every morning, for half an hour, he would go through a series of evolutions on the backs of two chairs placed side by side. He would hang on the door of his bedroom, pulling himself up and down an indefinite number of times. He would skirmish around the apartment after all fashions, and once he told me even "under the table." Breakfast followed, then a walk down town; and then he was in the best of spirits for the writing of his editorial article for that day.
"'He was a constant student. His daily leading editorial constituted, and was for many years, the Evening Post. Sometimes he would not get it written until one o'clock. "Can't I have it earlier?" I asked him one day. "Why not write it the evening before?" "Ah," he replied, "if I should empty out the keg in that way, it would soon be exhausted." He wanted his evenings for study. "Well, then, can't you get down earlier in the morning?" He said, "Oh yes." A few months afterward he exclaimed, with reference to the change: "I like it. I go through my gymnastics, walk all the way down, and when I get here I feel like work. I like it."'"
Mr. Boggs also tells us that Mr. Bryant's sight and hearing were scarcely impaired even up to his death.
How remarkable these facts seem! Here a man, known to the whole civilized world, says at seventy-seven that he "has reached a pretty advanced period of life without the usual infirmities of old age, and with his strength, activity, and bodily faculties generally in pretty good preservation." Wouldn't most of us like to do that? Are there not men who would promptly give millions, not "for an inch of time," but to be able to reach seventy-seven, and to say of themselves what Mr. Bryant could say of himself at that age? Nor at seventy-seven only, but at eighty-four, for his friend tells the same thing of him then.
And notice what he did: "Every morning," not for two or three minutes only, but "for half an hour, he would go through a series of evolutions on the backs of two chairs placed side by side." The "dips" which have been recommended in another place,[K] and which are so excellent for making the chest strong and keeping it so, are doubtless the "evolutions" meant; and as the great majority of men, whether young or old, have not strength of triceps and pectorals enough to even struggle through one of them, some conception can be formed of how wonderfully wiry and strong this large-headed, spare-bodied, illustrious old man was, to say nothing of the strength of purpose which would keep him so rigidly up to his work at an age when most men would have thought it their unquestionable duty to coddle themselves. Just think of a man over eighty "pulling himself up and down"—evidently on the "horizontal bar" he mentions—"an indefinite number of times!" Or "always walking" down to the office of the Evening Post, nearly three miles distant, and, after three hours, return, always walking, whatever be the weather or the state of the streets! Or of never waiting for the elevator if it was not ready, but always walking up the nine flights from the street to his office! And the writer has often seen him going up the top flight, and, instead of his step being faltering and feeble, it was uniformly a trot!