p. 138 | WESTON | AdventAI

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Mar 4, 1897

WESTON

WESTON, the pedestrian, is about fifty-eight years old, says the Christian Advocate. Why is he worthy of note in a religious paper? Because he is one of the most magnificent illustrations of the results of a temperate life that can be produced. On Christmas eve he made an attempt to walk one hundred and twelve miles in twenty-four hours. He did walk one hundred and three in less than twenty-four hours. A number of distinguished men requested him to show what he could do at his present age; the result has been that he has performed a most extraordinary feat without artificial stimulus. One of the leading papers devotes an editorial to him, entitled “The Grand Old Man.”

He walked eighty-eight miles without much rest, but was soon afterward overcome by vertigo, and rested for fifty minutes. He came back with renewed energy, and completed ninety miles in less than twenty hours. In less than twenty-four hours he completed one hundred miles, walking the last mile in eleven minutes and twenty-two seconds. The distance he covered was one hundred and three miles four hundred and twenty-six yards and one foot. He had been off the track altogether for periods aggregating one hour and forty-five minutes. He attributed his partial collapse to vertigo induced by loss of sleep, but added that such was no excuse for a man who had walked over seventy-two miles, without a rest, in fifteen hours. The last two miles were walked like a triumphal march between ranks of cheering admirers. When he lay down to rest, he went off to sleep like a healthy baby. Neither tobacco nor alcohol nor kola, nor any other stimulant, is entitled to any credit. Hence he was calling on his friends the next day as active as a hart or a roe.