eps was riding three hours every day in the Bois de
Boulogne. At ninety-eight, Sidney Cooper was exhibiting pictures at the
Royal Academy.

Yes, so long as the human machine is kept well oiled and regularly wound
up, it goes; and not only do active bodies and minds who go on working
live long, but they live happily and die peacefully, and they also make
happy all those who live with them.

It was a lovely sight to see De Lesseps ride and drive with a troop of
grandchildren and great-grandchildren. The youngest and most boisterous
member of the party was the old gentleman, and all that band of joyous
youngsters adored him.

The man of healthy body and active mind, who abandons work at fifty,
even at sixty, prepares himself for a life of mere vegetation.

Let him stop remunerative work, if he does not find it congenial, and
has enough or more than he wants to live upon, but let him immediately
trace out for himself a programme of life that will enable him to keep
his body and mind active, or let him look out for dyspepsia, gout,
rheumatism, paralysis, stiffness of the joints, and the gradual loss of
his mental faculties.

'I am sorry to be getting an old man,' once remarked Ferdinand de
Lesseps, 'but what consoles me is the thought that there is no other way
of living a long time.'

It is activity, it is work, that keeps you young, healthy, cheerful, and
happy; it is work--thrice blessed work--that makes you feel that you are
not a useless piece of furniture in this world, and makes you die with a
smile on your face. Work, work again, work always!

CHAPTER IX

ADVICE ON LETTER-POSTING

1. When you go out with the intention of posting a letter, be sure you
do not put it in your pocket, or the odds are ten to one that you will
return home with it.

2. Always address the envelope before you write a letter.

3. If you write love-letters to two different women, be careful to
enclose the first one in its properly addressed envelope before you
begin writing the second one, or Maria may receive the letter intended
for Eliza, and _vice versa_.

4. Do not apologize in your postscript for having forgotten to stamp
your letter. It might get you found out.

5. If you have written an important letter, or one containing money, put
it in the letter-box yourself. If anything wrong happens to it, you will
have no one to accuse or suspect.

6. When you send currency by post, do not let anyone know it by having
the