to betting, I would lay a wager that I can tell from the
book column in any of the newspapers or magazines of the land the condition
of each critic's liver and spleen at the time of his writing.

A very prominent literary man apologized to me the other day for his
merciless attack on one of my books, saying that he felt miserable that
morning and must pitch into something; and my book being the first one on
the table, he pitched into that. Our health decides our style of work. If
this world is to be taken for God, we want more sanctified muscle. The man
who comes to his Christian work having had sound sleep the night before,
and the result of roast beef rare in his organism, can do almost anything.
Luther was not obliged to nurse his appetite with any plantation bitters,
but was ready for the coarsest diet, even the "Diet of Worms."

But while I advocate all sports, and exercises, and modes of life that
improve the physical organism, I have no respect for bone, and nerve, and
muscle in the abstract. Health is a fine harp, but I want to know what tune
you are going to play on it. I have not one daisy to put on the grave of a
dead pugilist or mere boat-racer, but all the garlands I can twist for the
tomb of the man who serves God, though he be as physically weak as Richard
Baxter, whose ailments were almost as many as his books, and they numbered
forty.

At this last sentence the company at the table, forgetful of the presence
of Doctor Heavyasbricks, showed some disposition at good humor, when the
doctor's brows lifted in surprise, and he observed that he thought a man
with forty ailments was a painful spectacle, and ought to be calculated to
depress a tea-table rather than exhilarate it.

"But, Governor Wiseman," said Quizzle, "do you not think that it is
possible to combine physical, mental and spiritual recreations?"

Oh yes, replied the governor; I like this new mode of mingling religion
with summer pleasures. Soon the Methodists will be shaking out their tents
and packing their lunch-baskets and buying their railroad and steamboat
tickets for the camp-meeting grounds. Martha's Vineyard, Round Lake, Ocean
Grove and Sea Cliff will soon mingle psalms and prayers with the voice of
surf and forest. Rev. Doctor J.H. Vincent, the silver trumpet of
Sabbath-schoolism, is marshaling a meeting for the banks of Chautauqua Lake
which will probably be the grandest religious picnic ever held since the
five thousand sat down on