" And so saying, he slaps his chest and offers to let you feel how
hard the muscles are about his diaphragm. Of course, there is no
superfluous flesh on Smith. And if he abstained entirely from physical
exertion and guzzled heavy German beer all day and dined on turtle soup
and roast goose every day, and ate unlimited quantities of pastry, he
would still be what he describes as free from superfluous flesh. _I_
call it scraggy. Smith is one of the men set apart by nature to
perpetuate the Don Quixote type of beauty, just as I am doomed with the
lapse of time to approximate the Falstaffian type. Smith's five sisters
and brothers are thin. His father was slight and neurasthenic. His
mother was spare and angular. Little wonder the Smith family is fond of
walking. Friction and air-resistance in their case are practically
nonexistent.
I do not, of course, mean to deny the ancient tradition that a sound
body makes a sound mind. But I would only point out that we are just
beginning to wake to the truth of the converse proposition, that a sane,
equable, easy-going mind keeps the body well.
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