United States or Liberia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


A grade of one in five along the edge of an almost precipitous hill was not an alluring prospect, for we were little inclined toward hill-climbing demonstrations. Shortly after leaving the town we were involved in poorly kept country byways without sign-boards and slippery with heavy rains of the night before.

If, however, the human machine has no change of gear, it has one very marvellous mechanism which we may call a compensatory mechanism, for want of a short, easy name. The more we walk, the more we go hill-climbing, the more powerful do the muscular engines of the heel become. It is quite different with the engine of a motor cycle; the more it is used, the more does it become worn out.

You can easily tell how much it is used in walking by remembering how stiff and sore it gets when you have taken an unusually long tramp, particularly if there has been much hill-climbing in it. On the back of the thigh, runs another great group of muscles, which bend or flex the limb when they shorten.

An officer had an exciting bout with a Kaffir who was fighting on the Boer side, the weapon on one side being a broomstick that had been used as an alpenstock for hill-climbing, and on the other a Mauser rifle which the Kaffir had no chance to reload, so quickly were the blows showered upon him, and a bayonet-thrust delivered at hazard as he ran put an end to his fighting for the time at least.

He had left his home in New Rochelle an hour before. Mr. Jones was an enthusiastic motorist. In 1905 he won the Smithson cup for heavy cars. In 1903 he was second in the Westchester hill-climbing contest. In 1899 he helped to organise the first road race in New York State. He was in Congress from 1894 to 1898, and was elected to the Legislature in 1889, the same year that his eldest son was born.

It is said that next time the Queen visits Mentone, she will take up her abode at this house. Mr. Hanbury is equally courteous in welcoming visitors to his beautifully cultivated grounds and gardens. Mentone is more sheltered than either Cannes or Nice, the mountains encircling the town more closely; there is consequently more hill-climbing, and fewer extended walks and excursions for invalids.

High, high, above the low levels occupied by the hill-climbing Fairlanders, the mountains lift their heads in solemn dignity; looking down upon the loftiest Fairlander of them all looking down upon even the Taines themselves. But the glory of Mrs. Taine's God was not declared by the mountains.

Thus the hand was freed from the necessity of locomotion and made the servant of the mind. Locomotion overcomes the tendency to sedentary habits in modern schools and life, and helps the mind to helpful action, so that a peripatetic philosophy is more normal than that of the easy chair and the study lamp. Hill-climbing is unexcelled as a stimulus at once of heart, lungs, and blood.

Sitz-baths, foot-baths, plunge-baths, douches, and wet-sheet packings, speedily began to do their work upon Mr. Lane; and what with bathing, walking, hill-climbing, eating and drinking, and making up fast friendships with some of his brethren of the Water Cure, he appears to have had a very pleasant time of it. He tells us that he found that

Everybody went to bed early to-night. No evidence to-day." "Havens and Mrs. W. went hill-climbing this afternoon and were gone for an hour before I missed them. Then I took Aunt Jo and Debby out for a quick climb. Confound Aunt Jo! She got tired in ten minutes and Debby wouldn't go on without her. I think it was a put-up job. The others didn't return till after six.