What a fool he has been!
Perhaps he has caught himself in time. If so
he is in luck and Nature may partially forgive him
and give him a chance to “come back.”
He is well scared and he means to be good. But
the scare wears off, and then, too, “business”
presses him on again. And finally, still well
this side of sixty, perhaps, Nature taps him on the
shoulder and says, “Stop!”
“But,” he pleads, “I’ll be
good!”
“You are in the way,” she replies, “and
the sooner you make place for wiser men the better
I shall have my work done.”
But it is not alone the business world that is full
of these untimely breakdowns. We lose many a
man in the professional ranks with ten years of his
best work before him, the man of ripened intellect,
with his store of reading and experience—stopped
oftentimes in the very midst of that masterpiece whose
volumes would be read by future generations.
Executives whose value to corporations is increasing
in a compound degree suddenly receive notice that
the continually bent bow is cracking; almost immediately
they lose their ambition and initiative, they become
prematurely aged. These are indeed expensive losses!
And all this could be saved at an expenditure of a
few paltry hours a week devoted to the repair of the
physical man; given that and we may safely promise
that he shall round out the full measure of his mental
labors.
The men of this country are going the pace at a far
more reckless rate than that of any other nation.
Philosophers like Prof. Irving Fisher are sounding
the warning. Shall we heed it?
When Dr. D.A. Sargent, of Harvard University,
makes the charge that, “More than one-half of
the male population between the ages of eighteen and
forty-five years are unable to meet the health requirements
of military service, and that, of the largest and
strongest of our country folk pouring into our cities,
barely one of their descendants ever attains to the
third generation,” it becomes a pretty serious
charge. We are already familiar with the forgetfulness
of physical condition by men over forty, but we had
prided ourselves considerably over the belief that
the majority of our youth would compare favorably with
those of other countries. When one comes to sift
the statement, he should remember that many disabilities
for which the military examiners might reject a man
are not so serious, after all, and that nothing has
been said about the splendid physique of the large
number of men who are accepted.
