Getting Up Exercises

It was a rawish morning in Manhattan last week when the squeak of early traffic and the fading of a good night's sleep woke Columbia's Professor of Physical Education Jesse Feiring Williams. He stretched out one arm and twitched it a little. He wiggled his fingers. The like did he do to his other arm and hand, to his legs, feet and toes. Dexterously he rocked his hips, arched his back, rolled his head. Then a swift bathing, a brisk toweling, a fastidious dressing, a precise breakfasting, a quick walking across the streets to teach physical education to Columbia's aspirant educators, and a welling wanting to say something for publication.

He said it: that calisthenics (his profession) is a commercial exploitation of people's desires to keep fit; that people should better walk far at 4 m.p.h., play tennis and golf, swim, ride horseback, tramp, hike; that for "physical illiterates" setting up exercises are good; that his getting up exercises were better.

Other calisthenics proponents were irritated, included Professor of Physical Education Robert Tait McKenzie at the University of Pennsylvania, who retorted that the average city dweller neglected his abdominal regions and hence needed organized exercise. And Dr. Eugene Lyman Fiske, medical director of Manhattan's Life Extension Institute, who scoffed: "Walking in the city is the greatest camouflage I know of. All you will get from it, with the possible benefits for the lower limbs in some cases, is flat feet."