See what two other old men did—in some ways even a more remarkable thing than Mr. Bryant's great activity. The following despatch is from the New York Herald of February 23d, 1879:
"THE OLD MEN'S WALK.
"New Haven, Conn., Feb. 22, 1879.
"The walk between Thomas Carey, of the New York Cotton Exchange, and Joseph Y. Marsh, of this city, terminated to-night at a quarter of an hour before the appointed time, Marsh withdrawing. Carey had walked 211 miles and a fraction, to 209 miles and a corresponding fraction for Marsh. After the walk Marsh said that he was convinced that he had been beaten, and Carey made a speech expressing satisfaction with the manner in which he had been treated. The walk began on Wednesday of the present week, at eleven o'clock, and terminated at forty-five minutes past ten to-night. Carey is a great-grandfather, and is sixty-four years old, and Marsh sixty-three. Both had trained for the walk. It is understood that they will walk again in New York."
Sixty miles a day for three days and a half, and by a great-grandfather at that! Any man, or any horse, might well hold that a good day's work.
This activity among men so far on in years seems surprising. And why? Because, as people get past middle-life, often from becoming engrossed in business, and out of the way of anything to induce them to continue their muscular activity, oftener from increasing caution, and fear that some effort, formerly easy, may now prove hazardous to them, they purposely avoid even ordinary exercise—riding when they might, and indeed ought to, walk, and, instead of walking their six miles a day, and looking after their arms and chests besides, as Bryant did, gradually come to do nothing each day worthy of the name of exercise. Then the joints grow dry and stiff, and snap and crack as they work. The old ease of action is gone, and disinclination takes its place. The man makes up his mind that he is growing old and stiff—often before he is sixty—and that there is no help for that stiffness.
Well, letting the machinery alone works a good deal the same whether it is made of iron and steel, and driven by steam, or of flesh and blood and bones, and driven by the human heart. Maclaren cleverly compares this stiffening of the joints to the working of hinges, which, when "left unused and unoiled for any length of time, grate and creak, and move stiffly. The hinges of the human body do just the same thing, and from the same cause; and they not only require frequent oiling to enable them to move easily, but they are oiled every time they are put in motion, and when they are put in motion only. The membrane which secretes this oil, and pours it forth over the opposing surfaces of the bones and the overlying ligaments, is stimulated to activity only by the motion of the joint itself." Had Bryant spared himself as most men do, would he have been such a springy, easy walker, and so strong and handy at eighty-four? Does it not look as if the half-hour at the dumb-bells, and chairs, and horizontal bar, and the twelve or fifteen thousand steps which he took each day, had much to do with this spring and activity in such a green old age? Does it not look almost as if he had, half a century ago, read something not unlike the following from Maclaren:
"The first course of the system may be freely and almost unconditionally recommended to men throughout what may be called middle life, care being taken to use a bell and bar well within the physical capacity. The best time for this practice is in the early morning, immediately after the bath, and, when regularly taken, it need not extend over more than a few minutes."
Whether Bryant had ever seen these rules or not, the bell, the bar, and the morning-time for exercise make a noticeable coincidence.
Looking at the benefit daily exercise brought in the instances mentioned, would it not be well for every man who begins to feel his age to at once adopt some equally moderate and sensible course of daily exercise, and to enter on it with a good share of his own former energy and vigor? He does not need to live in the country to effect it, nor in the city. He can readily secure the few bits of apparatus suggested elsewhere[L] for his own home, wherever that home is, and so take care of his arms and chest. For foot-work there is always the road. Is it not worth while to make the effort? He can begin very mildly, and yet in a month reach quite a creditable degree of activity, and then keep that up. And if, as Mr. Bryant did, he should last till well past eighty, and, like him, keep free from deafness and dimness of vision, from stiffness and shortness of breath, from gout, rheumatism, paralysis, and other senile ailments, as he put it himself, "without the usual infirmities of old age"—indeed, with his "strength, activity, and bodily faculties generally in pretty good preservation," and all that time could attend promptly to all the daily duties of an active business as he did, as Vanderbilt did, as Palmerston did, as Thiers did—is not the effort truly worth the making? And who knows what he can do till he tries?