;
whereas he had lost all faith in drugging and dosing. And the efficacy
of faith is almost sufficient in such cases, to work a cure, were this
our only reliance. Of this we shall have an illustration in Chapter
LXXVI.

But though the water, as I now fully believe--and as I more than half
believed when I heard of the facts at the time,--was fairly indicated,
there is great hazard, in such circumstances in its use. Had this
gentleman taken a large draught at first, or had he swallowed more
moderate draughts with great eagerness, and a quick succession, it might
have produced an ill effect; it might, even, have provoked a relapse of
his dysentery and fever. Many a sick patient in the same circumstances,
would have poured the cooling liquid into an enfeebled throat and
stomach without the least restraint. And why did not he?

I will give you one reason. He was early taught to govern himself. He
told me, when eighty-eight years of age, he had made it a rule, all his
life long, never to eat enough, but always to leave off his meals with a
good appetite. He did not indeed, follow out with exactness the rule of
the late Amos Lawrence: "Begin hungry and leave off hungrier," but he
came very near it. He managed so as always to have a good appetite, and
never in the progress of more than fourscore years, whether by night or
day, to lose it. Such a man, if his mind is not too much reduced by long
disease, can be safely trusted with cold spring water, even during the
more painful and trying circumstances of convalescence from acute
disease.

Another thing deserves to be mentioned in this connection. He had not
kept his bowels and nervous system, all his life long, under the
influence of rum, tobacco, opium, coffee, tea, or highly seasoned food.
He did not it is true, wholly deny himself any one of these, except
opium and tobacco; but he only used them occasionally, and even then in
great moderation. Nor was it from mere indigence, or culpable stinginess
that he ate and drank, for the most part in a healthful manner. It
seemed to be from a conviction of the necessity of being "temperate in
all things;" and that such a course as he pursued tended to hardihood.
As one evidence of a conviction of this kind, I have known his children
and their school teacher to carry to the schoolroom for their dinner, a
quantity of cold Indian cake--ycleped Johnny cake--and nothing else; nor
was there an attempt at the slightest apology. Such a man