B.—REWARDS OF CONFORMITY.
The reward of nature-abiding habits is not confined to the negative advantage of escaping the discomforts of disease. In the pursuit of countless competitive avocations the Art of Survival is a chief secret of success, but in this age of sanitary abuses our lives are mostly half-told tales. Our season ends before the trees of hope have time to ripen their fruit; before their day’s work is done our toilers are overtaken by the shadows of approaching night. Sanitary reforms would undoubtedly lengthen our average term of life, and an increase of longevity alone would solve the most vexing riddles of existence: the apparent injustice of fate, the disproportion of merit and compensation, the aimlessness, the illusive promises and baffled hopes of life. For millions of our fellow-men an increase of health and longevity would suffice to make life decidedly worth living. Health lessens the temptations to many vices. Perfect health blesses its possessor with a spontaneous cheerfulness almost proof against the frowns of fortune and the cares of poverty. With a meal of barley cakes and milk, a straw couch, and scant clothing of homespun linen, a shepherd-boy in the highlands of the Austrian Alps may enjoy existence to a degree that exuberates in frolic and jubilant shouts, while all the resources of wealth cannot recall the sunshine which sickness has banished from the life of the dyspeptic glutton. If happiness could be computed by measure and weight, it would be found that her richest treasures are not stored in gilded walls, but [[22]]in the homes of frugal thrift, of rustic vigor and nature-loving independence. The sweetness of health reflects itself in grace of form and deportment, and wins friends where the elegance of studied manners gains only admirers. Health is also a primary condition of that clearness of mind the absence of which can be only partially compensated by the light of learning. Health is the basis of mental as of bodily vigor; country-bred boys have again and again carried off the prizes of academical honors from the pupils of refined cities, and the foremost reformers of all ages and countries have been men of the people; low-born, but not the less well-born, sons of hardy rustics and mechanics, from Moses, Socrates, Epictetus, Jesus Ben Josef, and Mohammed, to Luther, Rousseau, Thomas Paine, and Abraham Lincoln.