The benefits of walking are so quickly apparent that I hope to get you to make the start and keep it up for two weeks. Then you will require no further urging.

In walking, there are two most important things to do in order to get the greatest benefits: first—walk alone; second—walk your natural gait. So many people tell me they would like to walk all, or part of the way, between their home and office if they had company.

Company is the very thing you don't want in walking, and there are two reasons for this. One is, if you walk with a friend, you will hold yourself back, or else you will be walking faster than your natural gait. In either case it is a conscious effort, and this conscious effort, to a large degree, will cause you to lose much of the benefit from your walk.

The most important reason, however, is that if you walk with a friend, you are sure to talk, and thus you are using your nervous energy and tiring your brain—the very thing you want to avoid.

Walking gives you physical exercise which is absolutely necessary for health. It is the best exercise I know of, because you do not overdo your strength. Walking is beneficial, because when you walk alone, you give your brain a rest. You cannot read the papers, you cannot talk, and your mental apparatus gets complete rest.

I recommend that you walk anywhere from three to four miles in the morning. If your home is more than four miles from the office, walk three or four miles of the distance and then take the car.

Do not walk home in the evening unless the walk is a short one. In the evening you are tired, and you should conserve your strength. In the morning you are fresh, and the exercise comes to you at a time it is most needed. It will give you strength and courage, and help to keep you in a good mood all day.

I cannot too strongly emphasize the importance of walking alone, for it is then that you shift your nerve energy from the dry cell battery of the brain to the magneto, which is the spinal cord. The spinal cord works automatically and it doesn't wear itself out. The brain tires if it uses its energy.

In walking you use the thought and the brain impulse to start the magneto, and then the spinal cord action is automatic.

This automatic action of the spinal cord is a wise provision of nature to conserve strength.

The spinal cord energy is what you might call automatic habit.

For instance, in dressing and undressing yourself, you will recall that you put on or take off your clothes in regular order without giving the matter any thought. It is just habit.

If you wish to demonstrate the difference between the control of the physical body by brain impulse, and the spinal cord impulse, try this some morning: Start out for your exercise and mentally frame sentences like this as you walk—"right step, left step, right step, left step," and so on. Give thought to each step you have taken, and notice how tired you will be when you have gone half a mile.

The next morning, start to walk naturally; give no thought to walking; keep your mind on the beauties of nature which you are passing, or indulge in pleasant soliloquy, and you will feel no fatigue.

There isn't a bit of theory in this chapter; it is positive, practical sense that I have proved by my own experiences and by the experiences of everyone to whom I have made this suggestion of walking alone.

The moral is this—walk every morning and walk ALONE.