But the
joy of life is a very good thing, and while work is the essential in it,
play also has its place.
When obliged to live in cities, I for a long time found that boxing and
wrestling enabled me to get a good deal of exercise in condensed and
attractive form. I was reluctantly obliged to abandon both as I grew
older. I dropped the wrestling earliest. When I became Governor, the
champion middleweight wrestler of America happened to be in Albany, and
I got him to come round three or four afternoons a week. Incidentally
I may mention that his presence caused me a difficulty with the
Comptroller, who refused to audit a bill I put in for a wrestling-mat,
explaining that I could have a billiard-table, billiards being
recognized as a proper Gubernatorial amusement, but that a wrestling-mat
symbolized something unusual and unheard of and could not be permitted.
The middleweight champion was of course so much better than I was that
he could not only take care of himself but of me too and see that I was
not hurt--for wrestling is a much more violent amusement than boxing.
But after a couple of months he had to go away, and he left as a
substitute a good-humored, stalwart professional oarsman.
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