MARVELLOUS MAN.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10000, 22 March 1910, Page 4

MARVELLOUS MAN.

A laborious trifler adorns the "London" for March with some estimates of the food-stuff consumed and the life-labours accomplished by "man, the marvel.'" It seems the trifler went home rather tried one day after doing business in London &nd to account for this unusual sensation, "made a rapid calculation of the number of stairs which I had climbed during the ciay." Lifts must be scarce in London, for the computation worked out at nine hundred steps up and nine hundred down. Reducing this number to the more every-day climb of a hundred and sixty-one steps, the stairs of life will total about 3,000,000 for, the average business men. The advocate of going up-stairs as a physical exercise, will rejoice to contemplate so much of it during his three-score years and ten. But even on the flat our exertions are by no means to be despised. The average man, as he walks here and there, indoors and out, is supposed to cover 146,000 miles during his life-time stroll. This lamentable fact is, therefore, offered for our consideration, that, while he has chiefly stayed at home, doing nothing particular, thk inadventurous person has really taken steps which might have carried him nearly six times round the globe. He is supported during his; exertions, however, by bread that weighs sixteen tons eight hundredweight, and over, while, supposing he is not a vegetarian, he may eat 18,280 pounds of m°at, or eighteen bullocks, six pigs, ar.d a dozen sheep. It seems an over-abundance of beef, but the computer, no 'toubt, is a specially patriotic Engi - iman. The smoking allowance provides for an expenditure of one hundred and eighty-two pounds odd during the | smoker's life-time—and upon what more amiable indulgence could the sum be spent?. When welcome to a computation of how many greatcoats a tnan wears, how much leather is worn out in boots, and how many feet of hair is cut off in recurring inch-clippings, the trifler grows too laborious. Why not have turned to things less severely/practical? If all the laughs of a lifetime were thrown together, how loud' would be the concussion uf sound? Could you make a mountain or a molehill of the average girl's flirtations? And what precise floor-space is supposed to be covered by each individual cbntributoi* in the place which is paved with our good intentions?