Health, Happiness, and Longevity Part 4

"Don't allow your servants to put meat and vegetables in the same compartments of the refrigerator.

"Don't keep the parlor dark unless you value your carpet more than your and your children's health.

"Don't forget that moral defects are as often the cause as they are the effects of physical faults.

"Don't direct special mental or physical energies to more than eight hours' work in each day.

"Don't neglect to have your dentist examine your teeth at least every three months.

"Don't read, write, or do any delicate work unless receiving the light from the left side.

"Don't pamper the appet.i.te with such variety of food that may lead to excess.

"Don't read in street-cars or other jolting vehicles.

"Don't eat or drink hot and cold things immediately in succession.

"Don't pick the teeth with pins or any other hard substance.

"Don't sleep in a room provided with stationary washstands.

"Don't neglect any opportunity to insure a variety of food."

There are many things we should _never_ do. Among them are:--

"Never go to bed with cold or damp feet.

"Never lean with the back upon anything that is cold.

"Never begin a journey until the breakfast has been eaten.

"Never take warm drinks and then immediately go out in the cold.

"Never ride in an open carriage or near the window of a car for a moment after exercise; it is dangerous to health or even life.

"Never omit regular bathing, for unless the skin is in regular condition the cold will close the pores and favor congestion or other diseases.

"Never stand still in cold weather, especially after having taken a slight degree of exercise."

Perhaps among the following you may find succinctly stated what will be of eminent value:--

"Focus your brain as you would a burning-gla.s.s. b.u.t.ter enough for a slice won't do for a whole loaf.

"Keep empty-headed between times. Mental furniture should be very select. Useless lumber in the upper story is worse than a pocketful of oyster sh.e.l.ls. Leave your facts on your book shelves, where you can find them when wanted. A walking encyclopedia cannot work for want of room to turn round in his own head.

"Don't tax your memory. Make a memorandum, and put it in your pocket.

Every unnecessary thought is a waste of effective force.

"Don't believe that muscular exercise contracts head work. Brain and muscle are bung-hole and spigot of the same barrel. It is poor economy to keep both running.

"Pin your faith to the genius of hard work. It is the safest, most reliable, and most manageable sort of genius.

"Amuse yourself. This is the first principle of good hard work. And the second is like unto it.

"Don't work too much. It is quant.i.ty, not quality, that kills.

Therefore, work only in the day-time. Night was made for sleep. And loaf on Sunday. Six days' work earns the right to go a-fishing, or to church, or to any harmless diversion, on the seventh.

"Go to work promptly, but slowly. A late, hurried start keeps you out of breath all day trying to catch up.

"When you stop work forget it. It spoils brains to simmer after a hard boil.

"Feed regularly, largely, and slowly. Lose no meal; approach it respectfully and give it gratefully. No more can be got out of a man than is put into him.

"Sleep one-third of your whole life. How I hate the moralist who croaks over time wasted in sleep. Besides, sleep is, on the whole, the most satisfactory mode of existence."

Misconceivements.--"There are a number of mistakes made even by wise people while pa.s.sing through life. Prominent among them is the idea that you must labor when you are not in a fit condition to do so; to think that the more a person eats the healthier and stronger he will become; to go to bed at midnight and rise at daybreak, and imagine that every hour taken from sleep is an hour gained; to imagine that, if a little work or exercise is good, violent and prolonged exercise is better; to conclude that the smallest room in the house is large enough to sleep in; to eat as if you had only a moment to finish a meal in, or to eat without any appet.i.te, or to continue after it has been satisfied, merely to please the taste; to believe that children can do as much work as grown people, and that the more hours they study the more they learn; to imagine that whatever remedy causes one to feel immediately better (as alcoholic stimulants) is good for the system, without regard to the after-effects; to take off proper clothing out of season because you have become heated; to sleep exposed to a direct draught; to think any nostrum or patent medicine is a specific for all the diseases flesh is heir to."

Weariness.--"A tramp knows what it is to be leg-weary, a farm laborer to be body-weary, a literary man to be brain-weary, and a sorrowing man to be soul-weary. The sick are often weary of life itself. Weariness is generally a physiological 'ebb-tide,' which time and patience will convert into a 'flow'. It is never well to whip or spur a worn-out horse, except in the direst straits. If he mends his pace in obedience to the stimulus, every step is a drop drawn from his life-blood.

Idleness is not one of the faults of the present age; weariness is one of the commonest experiences. The checks that many a man draws on his physiological resources are innumerable; and, as these resources are strictly limited, like any other ordinary banking account, it is very easy to bring about a balance on the wrong side. Adequate rest is one kind of repayment to the bank, sound sleep is another, regular eating and good digestion another. One day's holiday in the week and one or two months in the year for those who work exceptionally hard usually bring the credit balance to a highly favorable condition; and thus with care and management physiological solvency is secured and maintained."

"What Produces Death.--Someone says that few men die of age. Almost all persons die of disappointment, personal, mental, or bodily toil, or accident. The pa.s.sions kill men sometimes even suddenly. The common expression, 'choked with pa.s.sion,' has little exaggeration in it, for even though not suddenly fatal, strong pa.s.sions shorten life.

Strong-bodied men often die young; weak men live longer than the strong, for the strong use their strength and the weak have none to use. The latter take care of themselves, the former do not. As it is with the body, so it is with the mind and temper. The strong are apt to break, or, like the candle, run; the weak burn out. The inferior animals, which live temperate lives, have generally their prescribed term of years. The horse lives 25 years, the ox 15 or 20, the lion about 20, the hog 10 or 12, the rabbit 8, the guinea-pig 6 or 7. The numbers all bear proportion to the time the animal takes to grow to its full size. But man, of all animals, is one that seldom comes up to the average. He ought to live a hundred years, according to the physiological law, for five times 20 are 100; but instead of that he scarcely reaches an average of four times the growing period. The reason is obvious--man is not only the most irregular and most intemperate, but the most laborious and hard-working of all animals. He is always the most irritable of all animals, and there is reason to believe, though we cannot tell what an animal secretly feels, that more than any other animal man cherishes wrath to keep it warm, and consumes himself with the fire of his own reflections."

Provided you have babies in your family go through the following and see if you can't train your child so it shall be among the last seventeen mentioned:--

"Take your pencil and follow me, while we figure on what will happen to the 1,000,000 of babies that will have been born in the last 1,000,000 seconds.

"I believe that is about the average--'one every time the clock ticks.'

"One year hence, if statistics don't belie us, we will have lost 150,000 of these little 'prides of the household.'

"A year later 53,000 more will be keeping company with those that have gone before.

"At the end of the third year we find that 22,000 more have dropped by the wayside.

"The fourth year they have become rugged little darlings, not nearly so susceptible to infantile diseases, only 8,000 having succ.u.mbed to the rigors imposed by the master.

"By the time they have arrived at the age of twelve years but a paltry few hundred leave the track each year.

"After threescore years have come and gone we find less trouble in counting the army with which we started in the fall of 1889.

"Of the 1,000,000 with which we began our count, but 370,000 remain; 630,000 have gone the way of all the world, and the remaining few have forgotten that they ever existed. At the end of eighty, or, taking our mode of reckoning, by the year 1969 A. D., there are still 97,000 gray-haired, shaky old grannies and grandfathers, toothless, hairless, and happy.

"In the year 1984 our 1,000,000 babies with which we started in 1889 will have dwindled to an insignificant 223 helpless old wrecks, 'stranded on the sh.o.r.es of time.'

"In 1992 all but seventeen have left this mundane sphere forever, while the last remaining wreck will probably, in seeming thoughtlessness, watch the sands filter through the hour-gla.s.s of time, and die in the year 1997 at the age of one hundred and eight.

"What a bounteous supply of food for reflection!"