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The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 13, Issue 12 (March 1, 1939.)

Training Without Tears

Training Without Tears.

Nobody would object to getting fit if he could do it in bed with a push-bell at his side and Jeeves, ever alert, at the buffet. It's a most painful fact that it's only the ageing who desire nothing more keenly than the little unhealthy luxuries of life, who have to fight for fitness. The young already have it. It is they who so unfeelingly sool fitness onto their shuddering elders. It is time some lover of mankind discovered that the best way to get fit is to eat and drink all the best things that are worst for us, to spend as much time as possible in vertebrate pondering, to ooze around in a state of digestive twilight, to let lawns return to their natural luxuriance, to keep the feet off the ground and the mind off exertion, to smoke the pipe of peace whenever we want to, and to grow as shockingly fat as natural laws will allow. Still, it's interesting to watch other people getting fitter and fitter every day; and the unfit can always do a little good by visiting the fit while they are recovering from getting fit in the hospital.

Personally, I regret that the old-fashioned sedan chair has gone out of date for rambles in the country. We can still learn something about fitness from the past. Certainly the expectation of life wasn't as long but it seemed longer, and it was far more comfortable to die of unfitness than by physical violence.

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