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.