Part 60 (1/2)

Scholars often leave their health, their happiness, their usefulness behind, in their great eagerness to drink deep draughts at wisdo that is valuable in life for the sake of reputation, influence, and money Business reat struggle for money and power The American prize, like the pearl in the oyster, is very attractive, but is too often the result of disease

Charles Linnaeus, the great naturalist, so exhausted his brain by over-exertion that he could not recognize his oork, and even forgot his own nae, but it cost hiht and forced his brain by stih, but he died at twenty-four

Paley died at sixty-two of overwork He was called ”one of the subliht of Yale College nearly killed hi ht six hours a day, and took no exercise whatever He could not be induced to stop until he became so nervous and irritable that he was unable to look at a book tentiine the surprise of the angels at the death of or of life Could we but read the notes of their autopsies we ht say less of mysterious Providence at funerals They would run somewhat as follows:--

NOTES FROM THE ANGELS' AUTOPSIES

What, is it returned so soon?--a body framed for a century's use returned at thirty?--a te destroyed alray hairs, wrinkles, a bent form, and death to do with youth?

Has all this beauty perished like a bud just bursting into bloori, over-exciteaiety and frivolity of fashi+onable life?

Here is an educated, refined wos pay for breathing impure air! Nature provides them with a tonic atmosphere, compounded by the divine Chemist, but they refuse to breathe it in its purity, and soti, or the so-called comforts of life; they can live without education or culture, but their lungs ood, healthful air-food twenty-four thousand times a day if they would maintain health Oh, that they would see, as we do, the intimate connection between bad air, bad morals, and a tendency to cri husband Educated and refined, what infinite possibilities beckoned hient offered hith, and happiness in _eau de vie_, or ”water of life,” as he called it, at only fifteen cents a glass The best of our company tried to dissuade hiain” with the draet? A hardened conscience, a ruined home, a diseased body, a muddled brain, a heartbroken wife, wretched children, disappointed friends, triuuish, an unwept deathbed, an unhonored grave And only to think that he is only one of many thousands! ”What fools these mortals be!”

Did he not see the destruction tohich he was rushi+ng with all the feverish haste of slavish appetite? Ah, yes, but only when it was too late In his clenched hand, as he lay dead, was found a cruible so tremulous were the nerves of the writer: ”Wife, children, and over forty thousand dollars all gone! I alone aone down my throat When I enty-one I had a fortune I am not yet thirty-five years old

I have killed my beautiful wife, who died of a broken heart; have one I do not kno I can get my next meal I shall die a drunken pauper This is my last money, and my history If this bill co fronificent specimen of manhood this would have been if his life had been under the rule of reason, not passion! He dies of old age at forty, his hair is gray, his eyes are sunken, his complexion sodden, his body marked with the labels of his disease A physique fit for a God, fashi+oned in the Creator's iical hulk wrecked on passion's seas, and fit only for a danger signal to warn the race What would parents think of a captain ould leave his son in charge of a shi+p without giving hi the rocks, reefs, and shoals? Do they not know that those who sleep in the ocean are but a handful compared with those who have foundered on passion's seas? Oh, the sins of silence which parents coainst those dearer to thereat solicitude of parents regarding their education, their associations, their welfare generally, and the ard to their physical natures An intelligent explanation, by all hters and by all fathers to the sons, of the e, would revolutionize civilization

This young clergy to be popular This student co to lead his class

This young lawyer overdrew his account at Nature's bank, and she foreclosed by a stroke of paralysis

This merchant died at thirty-five by his own hand His life was slipping aithout enjoy his own spiritual grave whilesocietyto do and dissipation, at thirty

What a miserable farce the life of men and women seems to us! Tiive a second h it ater Opportunities which angels covet they fling away as of no consequence, and die failures, because they have ”no chance in life”

Life, which seems so precious to us, they spurn as if but a bauble

Scarcely a mortal returns to us who has not robbed himself of years of precious life Scarcely a e, as autumn leaves drop in the forest

Has life become so cheap that mortals thus throw it away?

CHAPTER XLVII

HABIT--THE SERVANT,--THE MASTER

Habit, if wisely and skilfully formed, becomes truly a second nature--BACON

Habit, with its iron sinews, Clasps and leads us day by day

LAMARTINE

The chain of habit coils itself around the heart like a serpent, to gnaw and stifle it--HAZLITT

You can not, in any given case, by any sudden and single effort, will to be true, if the habit of your life has been insincerity--F W