THOMAS SHILLITOE.
Mr. Shillitoe was a distinguished member of the Society of Friends, at Tottenham, near London. The first twenty-five years of his life were spent in feeble health, made worse by high living. This high living was continued about twenty years longer, when, finding himself fast failing, he yielded to the advice of a medical friend, and abandoned all drinks but water, and all food but the plainest kinds, by which means he so restored his constitution that he lived to be nearly ninety years of age; and at eighty could walk with ease from Tottenham to London, six miles, and back again. The following is a brief account of this distinguished man, when at the age of eighty, and nearly in his own words:
It is now nearly thirty years since I ate fish, flesh, or fowl, or took fermented liquor of any kind whatsoever. I find, from continued experience, that abstinence is the best medicine. I don't meddle with fermented liquors of any kind, even as medicine. I find I am capable of doing better without them than when I was in the daily use of them.
"One way in which I was favored to experience help in my willingness to abandon all these things, arose from the effect my abstinence had on my natural temper. My natural disposition is very irritable. I am persuaded that ardent spirits and high living have more or less effect in tending to raise into action those evil propensities which, if given way to, war against the soul, and render us displeasing to Almighty God."