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The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 12, Issue 10 (January 1, 1938.)

Onion is Strength

Onion is Strength.

Health is wealth above barter. What you've got in yourself can't be counted in coin. The “Kick” of health is not in the “Kick.” It's in the “will-it” and not in the wallet.

Many a millionaire would exchange his wealth for health—a greater possession.

Truly, mind is mortgaged to muscle, mentality is leased to vitality, and health is the handmaiden of happiness.

If the flesh refuses the mind fuses. Body bosses “bean,” and success reposes halfway between brawn and brain.

Mind may illuminate personality, mentality may light individuality and thought redeem existence, but the white light of thought springs from the red corpuscle of health.

If you've ever had a liver
You will know that this is true,
When your feet are shod with treacle,
And your brain is bound with glue,
And your thoughts are damp and humid,
And you hate your fellow man,
And you feel that life's a washout
With the buzzing in your “pan.”
This is when you take a tumble
To the adage, proved at length,
That the fragrance of an onion
Is dependent on its strength.

The very essence of an onion is its pervading potency. An onion imposes its personality, it lingers in the memory, it swats you in the eye. Why? Because it vibrates virility, it quivers with quality, it gets you like a sergeant-major or an auctioneer, who represent the nearest approach to an onion's strength human nature has yet achieved. Sergeant-majors are the purple patches of physical felicity, and auctioneers never know when they're out-bid. We might take a tip from their technique and—

Make a hobby of the body,
Keep the curves from growing shoddy,
Mould the figure, watch each bulge,
Don't grow careless, don't indulge
In confections rich and cloying,
Such as pastry—form-destroying,
Never mind the mind—oh, girly!
Keep the hair upon it curly,
Watch the step, watch every cuticle
Of The Body Beautiful.
And, ladies, if we might be so bold!
You must seek the body-beautiful,
Pursue digestion dutiful,
If you want to be adorable,
Not physically deplorable,
You will have to keep the torso
Slim and supple—yes and more so,
You will have to brush your toes
Every morning with your nose.
If you really would be pliable,
With bodywork reliable,
Go in for callisthenics,
Have no fear of epidemics,
Keep your spirits up with diet,
And—oh, baby, what a riot!—
Get the figure slim and slinky,
And complexion pure and pinky,
And you'll catch 'em, lady, catch 'em!
Those are things that always fetch 'em,
You will find with swains more dutiful,
With the body beautiful.

The Ageless Age.

This is the ageless age of health and beauty—of chesty chaps and athletic Amazons, of evergreen grannies and grappling grandpas. The dietician, the capering calory, the victorious vitamin, the air-minded mind, the sun-soothed body and the spanking spirit of derring-do
“The sergeant-major is the purple patch of physical felicity.”

“The sergeant-major is the purple patch of physical felicity.”

page 51 combine to put Years on the spot and take Age for a ride.

The search for health, the quest for bounding beautitude, goes on apace.

There are too many brains in the world to-day. They are finding out things so fast that the frame can't keep up with them. The gap between mind and muscle, brain and body, has lengthened until life gallops along in short pants, ten jumps behind Invention. Something has to be done to preserve the balance between horse-power and man-power.

Fizzical Fitness.

Thus old gentlemen spring about gymnasia like pink tigers, hitting punching balls as though they were knocking spots off rival coin collecters, and generally comporting themselves with the abandon of a jazz orchestra. Thus middle-aged ladies roll about the floors of their compartments to preserve that line of least resistance so sought after by the fear sex.

Thus the tempestuous typiste spends her lunch hour on the roof, limbering up her physique, seeking the answer to the maiden's prayer in athletic ebullience.

Thus the aspiring Adonis airs his graces and paces, peeled to plimsoll at the selvage of the sea, seeking to match muscle with hustle, and fit himself for the catch-as-catch-can of Commerce.

Thus babies bounce in their bassinettes and turn handsprings over the bed-rail, maiden aunts stroll into breakfast on their hands, and octogenerians go for cross-country gallops on Saturday afternoons with the boy scouts.

“The ageless age of health.”

“The ageless age of health.”

“Here's Health!”

The day of sedentary somnolence is past, the pace grows hot, the world is in shorts, the march of progress has broken into a gallop, and life is a matter of the survival of the flittest. This pursuit of “fizzical” fitness is all to the good. Compare our husky days with the musty, dusty days of wine and whiskers, of crinoline and crochet, and you will realise that the farce of gravity is on the wane; that life has hitched up its jeans and bared its biceps. Health is becoming a protracted industry.

With health and sport joined in hurly matrimony, we may return to the dougthy days of Samson, Herk U. Lees, and the Likely Lad From Bristol. With Fitness organised and Sport supervised, there is no reason why we should not be the Spartan State of the South Seize.

For, if the mind is the light, the body is the lighthouse. The one is inseparable from the other and let no man put them asunder.

If we persevere we may, in time, produce a brand of husky intelligentsia, of muscular mentality. We may breed a species so strong in mind and body that it can bear the burden of enlightenment and progress, and shoulder the blessings of civilisation, without batting an eyelid.

And so let's charge our glasses with the spirit of sport and say “Here's health!”