The simple living person gets up earlier, works easier and gets more enjoyment from the sunshine, the open fireplace and all the beauties of nature.
A fine cigar may stimulate the brain, but like Emerson you may decline when you should be in your prime, and perhaps, like him, lose your memory. Emerson in his last years attended the funeral of his old friend, Longfellow the poet, but could not remember this man's name at his last rites.
I believe it is utterly impossible for any person to live a real safe moral life, according to the Christian code, and subsist upon the ordinary food and drink of the times. For instance, the use of coffee will often create immoral feelings which a saint could not overcome. Tobacco creates sensations in a like manner. Anything which creates undue nerve action causes a congestion of the inner organs. I might as well tell you to place a torch in a powder magazine and then prevent an explosion as to tell you to become a true Christian and live upon highly exciting foods or drugs.
There was never a true saint which did not practice self-restraint in regard to foods, drinks and habits.
You will see that I am an advocate of the simple life, yet I want to say that I am not trying to drive anyone against their will, and I also want to say that I do not say you will go to immediate destruction, always, by diverging from my creed. Some persons from the nature of their ordinarily proper habits withstand much that is taboed by science, yet this does not change the facts that correct physiological habits are the only ones to be condoned.
The use of some fruit sauce may not always prove serious, of course, and the farmer who eats baked apples and milk may plod along in his own way and retain good health, yet an invalid who can barely keep alive had better be fed on easily assimilated concentrated life building food. As explained elsewhere, a person who does not use alcohol or tobacco, etc., can use some fruit sauces, etc., and as the poisons have not weakened the nerves which govern the liver and vital organs, the liver can take care of the acids and sugars. Stimulants create wastes in excess and overpower the kidneys and liver, and when they are discarded there is loss of required nerve power.
When a nation has any serious business on hand or when Arctic explorers want to get to their goal they abolish the use of ALCOHOL.
Russia has been under prohibition for the short time of the war, and the decrease of crime has already proved what a monster DRINK has been. In 33 precincts of Moscow for the first half year of 1914 there was an average of 986 criminal cases a month, while for the first temperance month there were only 406. Crime was reduced 54.7 per cent.
Within two weeks after the closing of the wine shops of Russia she felt as if RESURECTED, and it was proved that perfect temperance was possible and that alcohol was not a necessity.
This is only the working out of a Natural Law and is the enactment of one branch of codes, and it holds true of drugs and all of the many branches of physiological requisites.