self has ever been before.

His muscular strength is very great. A few days since, a number of the
most athletic young men in our village were trying their strength at
lifting a cask of lime, weighing five hundred pounds. All failed to do
it, with the exception of one, who partly raised it from the ground.
After they were gone, this vegetable eater without any difficulty raised
the cask four or five times. More than three years ago this man lost his
daughter, who fell a prey to cholera infantum; he has now a daughter
rather more than a year old, whom he has trained on strictly
physiological principles; and though very feeble at birth, and for three
months subsequently, she is now the most healthy child in the town. This
child had some of the first symptoms of consumption last August, owing
to the too free indulgence of the mother in improper articles of food;
but being treated with demulcents, at the same time correcting the
mother's system, she recovered, and is now the "picture of health."

I was conversing with this gentleman the other day respecting his
health--says he is perfectly well, weighs one hundred and sixty-five
pounds; and though he was called well when eating flesh, he was not so
in reality; for every few weeks he was troubled with headache and a
sense of fullness in the region of the stomach, for which he was obliged
to take an active cathartic. For a few months before he adopted the
vegetable system, he had decided symptoms of congestion in the head,
such as precede apoplexy. I questioned him as to his appetite. He
informed me, that when he ate meat he had such an unconquerable desire
for food about eleven o'clock, that he could not wait till noon. This he
calls "meat hunger," for it disappeared soon after he came to the
present style of living. He has no craving now; but when he begins to
eat, the zest is exquisite.

Yours,
JOSHUA PORTER.

LETTER IV.--FROM DR. N. J. KNIGHT, OF TRURO.

Dated at TRURO, October, 1837.

DR. ALCOTT: SIR,--I hasten to comply so far with your request as to show
my decided approbation of a fruit and farinaceous diet, both in health
and sickness. The manner in which nutritious vegetables are presented to
us for our consumption and support, evince to a demonstration the
simplicity of our corporeal systems. Through every medium of correct
information, we learn that the most distinguished men, both in ancient
and modern times, were pre-eminently distinguishe