nt. I have only to add, that we parted without a
collision, and that, in my heart, I could not help thanking him for the
service he had rendered in inciting me to the regimen which had resulted
so beneficially to my health.

The impetus given to my gymnastic education by the little incident I have
just related was continued without abatement through my whole college
life. Gradually I acquired the reputation of being the strongest man in my
class. I discovered that with every day's development of my strength there
was an increase of my ability to resist and overcome all fleshly ailments,
pains, and infirmities,--a discovery which subsequent experience has so
amply confirmed, that, if I were called on to condense the proposition
which sums it up into a formula, it would be in these words: _Strength is
Health_.

Until I had renovated my bodily system by a faithful gymnastic training, I
had been subject to nervousness, headache, indigestion, rush of blood to
the head, and a weak circulation. It was torture to me to have to listen
to the grating of a slate-pencil, the filing of a saw, or the scratching
of glass. As I grew in strength, my nerves ceased to be impressible to
such annoyances. Another good effect was to take away all appetite for any
stimulating food or drink. Although I had never applied "rebellious
liquors" to my blood, I had been in the habit of taking a bowl of strong
coffee morning and night. Now a craving for milk took the place of this
want, and my coffee was gradually diminished to less than a fourth of what
had been a customary indulgence.

At last arrived the eagerly looked-for day of release from collegiate
restrictions and labors. I graduated, and the question, so momentous in
the history of all adolescents, "What shall I be?" addressed itself
seriously to my mind. My father was desirous that I should choose medicine
for a profession, and become the fourth physician, in lineal sequence, of
my family on the paternal side.

Medicine. I cavilled at it awhile, that I might bring out to view its
grimmest and most discouraging aspect The cares, trials, humiliations of a
young physician, his months and years of uncompensated drudgery, passed in
awful review before me. I thought of his toils among the poor and lowly,
the vicious and depraved,--of his broken sleep,--the interruptions of his
social ease,--and then of the many scenes so repugnant to delicate nerves
which he has to pass through,--scenes of pai