Mr. Bryant also has recourse to the use of dumb-bells, and other
gymnastic appliances. For my part, I find no artificial practices
necessary for the maintenance of health and a vigorous circulation of
the blood. My only gymnastics have been those of Nature--walking,
riding, working in field and garden, bathing, swimming, etc. In some
of those practices, or in the amount of their use, Nature, in my later
years, has dictated an abatement. In Mr. Bryant's abhorrence of
tobacco, I fully sympathize. That is a poisoner, a stupefier, a
traitor to the nervous system, and, consequently, to energy and the
spirit of enterprise, which I renounced once and for ever before I
reached my twentieth year. The main causes of the vigor of my
constitution and the retention of sound health, comfort, and activity
to within three years of eighty, I shall point out as I proceed. First
and foremost, it was my good fortune to derive my existence from
parents descended on both sides from a vigorous stock, and of great
longevity. I remember my great-grandmother, an old lady of nearly
ninety; my grandmother of nearly as great an age. My mother lived to
eighty-five, and my father to the same age. They were both of them
temperate in their habits, living a fresh and healthy country life,
and in enjoyment of that tranquillity of mind which is conferred by a
spirit of genuine piety, and which confers, in return, health and
strength.
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