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Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 1809-1894

"Autocrat of the Breakfast Table"

Watts, -
"Alike unknowing and unknown," -
that nothing but a sense of duty would have prompted me to reveal
the secret of its existence. I concede, therefore, that walking is
an immeasurably fine invention, of which old age ought constantly
to avail itself.
Saddle-leather is in some respects even preferable to sole-leather.
The principal objection to it is of a financial character. But you
may be sure that Bacon and Sydenham did not recommend it for
nothing. One's hepar, or, in vulgar language, liver,--a ponderous
organ, weighing some three or four pounds,--goes up and down like
the dasher of a churn in the midst of the other vital arrangements,
at every step of a trotting horse. The brains also are shaken up
like coppers in a money-box. Riding is good, for those that are
born with a silver-mounted bridle in their hand, and can ride as
much and as often as they like, without thinking all the time they
hear that steady grinding sound as the horse's jaws triturate with
calm lateral movement the bank-bills and promises to pay upon which
it is notorious that the profligate animal in question feeds day
and night.
Instead, however, of considering these kinds of exercise in this
empirical way, I will devote a brief space to an examination of
them in a more scientific form.
The pleasure of exercise is due first to a purely physical
impression, and secondly to a sense of power in action.


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