refer to ordinary life as the history of my
own. Like my friend the Doctor, I have lived temperately, eating little
animal food, and that not as an aliment, so much as a condiment for the
vegetables, which constitute my principal diet. I double, however, the
Doctor's glass and a half of wine, and even treble it with a friend;
but halve its effect by drinking the weak wines only. The ardent wines I
cannot drink, nor do I use ardent spirits in any form. Malt liquors
and cider are my table drinks, and my breakfast, like that also of
my friend, is of tea and coffee. I have been blest with organs of
digestion, which accept and concoct, without ever murmuring, whatever
the palate chooses to consign to them, and I have not yet lost a tooth
by age. I was a hard student until I entered on the business of life,
the duties of which leave no idle time to those disposed to fulfil
them; and now, retired, and at the age of seventy-six, I am again a hard
student. Indeed my fondness for reading and study revolts me from the
drudgery of letter-writing. And a stiff wrist, the consequence of an
early dislocation, makes writing both slow and painful. I am not so
regular in my sleep as the Doctor says he was, devoting to it from
five to eight hours, according as my company or the book I am reading
interests me; and I never go to bed without an hour, or half hour's
previous reading of something moral, whereon to ruminate in the
intervals of sleep. But whether I retire to bed early or late, I rise
with the sun. I use spectacles at night, but not necessarily in the
day, unless in reading small print. My hearing is distinct in particular
conversation, but confused when several voices cross each other, which
unfits me for the society of the table. I have been more fortunate than
my friend in the article of health. So free from catarrhs that I have
not had one (in the breast, I mean) on an average of eight or ten years
through life. I ascribe this exemption partly to the habit of bathing my
feet in cold water every morning for sixty years past. A fever of more
than twenty-four hours I have not had above two or three times in my
life. A periodical headache has afflicted me occasionally, once, perhaps,
in six or eight years, for two or three weeks at a time, which seems
now to have left me; and, except on a late occasion of indisposition, I
enjoy good health; too feeble, indeed, to walk much, but riding without
fatigue six or eight miles a day, and s