nder my roof, so that he might not only receive such daily
attention and counsel as the circumstances required, but also such
food, air, exercise, and ablutions as were needful. He was accordingly
admitted to the rights, privileges, and self-denials of the family.

Here he spent a considerable time. While under my care, I made every
reasonable exertion for his recovery which I would have made for a
favorite child. Indeed, few children were ever more obedient or docile.
He would sometimes say to me: "Doctor, I have no more power over myself
than a child, and you must treat me _as you would_ a child." Nor was he
satisfied till I restricted his every step, both with regard to the
quantity and quality of his food, and the hours and seasons of bathing,
exercise, reading, etc. It was to me a painful task, and I sometimes
shrunk from it, for the moment. There was, however, no escape. I had
embarked in the enterprise, and must take the consequences.

At first, his improvement was scarcely perceptible, and I was almost
discouraged. But at length, after much patience and perseverance, the
suffering digestive organs began, in some measure, to resume their
healthful condition, and the whole face of things to wear a different
aspect. He left us to take charge of a public school.

For some time after the opening of this school, his health seemed to be
steadily improving, and the world around him began to have its charms
again. He was in his own chosen, and, I might say, native element, which
was to him a far more healthful stimulus than any other which could have
been devised, whether by the physician or the physiologist.

Nothing in this world is so well calculated to preserve and promote
human health, as full and constant employment, of a kind which is
perfectly congenial and healthful, and which we are fully assured is
useful. In other words, the first great law of health is benevolence. It
keeps up in the system that centrifugal tendency of the circulation of
which I have already spoken, and which is so favorable for the rejection
of all effete and irritating matters. It would have been next to
impossible for our Saviour, with head, heart, and hands engaged as his
were, to have sickened; nor was it till the most flagrant physiological
transgressions had been long repeated, that even Howard the
philanthropist sickened and died. Not the whole combined force of
malaria and contagion could overcome him, till continual over-fatigue,