Democratic Sentinel, Volume 2, Number 38, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 November 1878 — Walking. [ARTICLE]

Walking.

Perhaps it is not strange that the average person will not be persuaded that, taking it altogether, walking is the best exercise in which lie can engage. It is such a simple and natural feat in the ordinary business of life; it is performed so automatically, and, as one might say, unconsciously, that lie never thinks of ascribing to it those benefits of which it is the potential cause. We do not say that under peculiar circumstances, in unique phases of certain disease, other kinds of exercise may not be more efficacious, or may not be employed as very useful auxiliaries to walking. Reference is meant mainly to the average man in ordinary health. For liim, walking at tlie proper time, in the proper manner and at the proper distances has advantages of which he does not dream. Horseback riding, which' so many physicians recommend to patients with broken-down constitutions, is doubtless very restorative; but first-class authorities allege, and witli reason, that, excellent as this mode of exercise is, it is inferior as a whole to walking. It sometimes seems, we admit, as though an individual were born whose feet and legs were merely intended to carry him to stages, cars, steamboats, and so forth, and that none of his motion through life was meant by an inscrutable Providence to be personal, active and voluntary. But these cases are not numerous. In most instances the will to walk alone is needed. All the rest may safely be left to take care of itself.