Literary Lapses | Page 9

He might, of course,
have had it done in a shoe-store with a boot stretcher, but after all it
cost him nothing this way, and what is half an hour?
After he had got his undershirt on, Jiggins used to hitch himself up like
a dog in harness and do Sandow exercises. He did them forwards,
backwards, and hind-side up.
He could have got a job as a dog anywhere. He spent all his time at this
kind of thing. In his spare time at the office, he used to lie on his
stomach on the floor and see if he could lift himself up with his
knuckles. If he could, then he tried some other way until he found one
that he couldn't do. Then he would spend the rest of his lunch hour on
his stomach, perfectly happy.
In the evenings in his room he used to lift iron bars, cannon-balls,
heave dumb-bells, and haul himself up to the ceiling with his teeth.
You could hear the thumps half a mile. He liked it.
He spent half the night slinging himself around his room. He said it
made his brain clear. When he got his brain perfectly clear, he went to
bed and slept. As soon as he woke, he began clearing it again.
Jiggins is dead. He was, of course, a pioneer, but the fact that he
dumb-belled himself to death at an early age does not prevent a whole
generation of young men from following in his path.

They are ridden by the Health Mania.
They make themselves a nuisance.
They get up at impossible hours. They go out in silly little suits and run
Marathon heats before breakfast. They chase around barefoot to get the
dew on their feet. They hunt for ozone. They bother about pepsin. They
won't eat meat because it has too much nitrogen. They won't eat fruit
because it hasn't any. They prefer albumen and starch and nitrogen to
huckleberry pie and doughnuts. They won't drink water out of a tap.
They won't eat sardines out of a can. They won't use oysters out of a
pail. They won't drink milk out of a glass. They are afraid of alcohol in
any shape. Yes, sir, afraid. "Cowards."
And after all their fuss they presently incur some simple old-fashioned
illness and die like anybody else.
Now people of this sort have no chance to attain any great age. They
are on the wrong track.
Listen. Do you want to live to be really old, to enjoy a grand, green,
exuberant, boastful old age and to make yourself a nuisance to your
whole neighbourhood with your reminiscences?
Then cut out all this nonsense. Cut it out. Get up in the morning at a
sensible hour. The time to get up is when you have to, not before. If
your office opens at eleven, get up at ten-thirty. Take your chance on
ozone. There isn't any such thing anyway. Or, if there is, you can buy a
Thermos bottle full for five cents, and put it on a shelf in your cupboard.
If your work begins at seven in the morning, get up at ten minutes to,
but don't be liar enough to say that you like it. It isn't exhilarating, and
you know it.
Also, drop all that cold-bath business. You never did it when you were
a boy. Don't be a fool now. If you must take a bath (you don't really
need to), take it warm. The pleasure of getting out of a cold bed and
creeping into a hot bath beats a cold plunge to death. In any case, stop
gassing about your tub and your "shower," as if you were the only man

who ever washed.
So much for that point.
Next, take the question of germs and bacilli. Don't be scared of them.
That's all. That's the whole thing, and if you once get on to that you
never need to worry again.
If you see a bacilli, walk right up to it, and look it in the eye. If one
flies into your room, strike at it with your hat or with a towel. Hit it as
hard as you can between the neck and the thorax. It will soon get sick
of that.
But as a matter of fact, a bacilli is perfectly quiet and harmless if you
are not afraid of it. Speak to it. Call out to it to "lie down." It will
understand. I had a bacilli once, called Fido, that would come and lie at
my feet while I was working. I never knew a more affectionate
companion, and when it was run over by an automobile, I buried it in
the garden with genuine sorrow.
(I admit this is an exaggeration. I don't