I FULLY believe that he does, through what you so aptly describe as muscular memory, acquire the capacity to retain a large degree of his powers if only for the effect on the mind, the boy’s own tastes should be consulted as to the sports in which he is chiefly exercised.
I have four boys, the youngest is five, the next oldest is nine. He is a sweet-tempered little fellow, not at all combative. He is most fond of his bicycle and his pony. Like all of my boys when young, he rides with a small Mexican or cow saddle. This summer I intend to teach him to shoot with a small calibre rifle.
The next oldest, Kermit, is thirteen. He had water on the knee when young and it kept him back and has prevented his ever being really proficient in sports. I have been utterly unable to teach him to box, but he wrestles pretty well for his weight and age.
The oldest, Ted, is fifteen. He is a regular bull terrier and although devoted to his mother and sisters — I don’t believe he is quarrelsome among his friends — he is everlastingly having sanguinary battles with outsiders. In most branches of sport he has already completely passed me by. I could probably still beat him at boxing and wrestling, but in another year he will have passed me in these . . .
Of late years, since I have been President, my life has necessarily been very sedentary, tending to grow both fat and stiff. But I have kept up exact-ly the kind of exercise you describe. I can ride fifty miles on horseback or walk twenty on foot. I do but little boxing because it seems rather absurd for a President to appear with a black eye or cut lip.
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You are well aware of the mistake that so many of my English friends have made, that is of treating physical development as the be-all and the end-all. I have met English officers to whom polo and racing, football and baseball were far more absorbing than their professional duties. In such a case athleticism becomes a mere harmful disease. Nevertheless, in our modern highly artificial, and on the whole congested, civilization, no boon to the race could be greater than the acquisition by the average man of that bodily habit which you describe.