Strength and happiness / by Richard A. Proctor.

  • Proctor, Richard A. (Richard Anthony), 1837-1888.
Date:
1885
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Strength and happiness / by Richard A. Proctor. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    12/308
    or who has no occasion to enter on professional or commercial work for a livings niay, of course, defend himself for being a leading exponent of some form of athletics, on the plea that he is capable of nothing better. Or a man may be able to show that owing to some remarkable aptitude for a particular sport, he has obtained great skill in it at the expense of little time or labour beyond what he might fairly give to it as recreation. But the immense majority of those whose names are before the public as the leading amateur exponents of sport, have no such excuse. They are capable of better things, and they are not capable of acquiring or retaining their special athletic proficiency except at the expense of the better work they might do and ought to do. It is the same, I remark in passing, with Chess, AVhist, Billiards, and such recreations. Great skill in them, excej)t among professionals, is a thing either to be accounted for, or to be ashamed of. But so to exercise and recreate the body that it may be strong and ready throughout, that it may be a support and not a burden to the man of thought and action—is worth a daily expenditure of some little time. The rule by which the necessary exercises and recreations should be guided is the sound old Scripture rule,—” Be moderate in all things. I may remark that I have myself had serious occasion to recognise the value of daily and varied exercise. An accident on the South-Western Railway caused a shock to my system which for months