Jeremy Bentham, who lived to be eighty-five, retained to the last the fresh and cheerful temperament of a boy. John Wesley, who died when he was eighty-eight, also had a happy disposition. “I feel and grieve,” he says, “but by the grace of God I fret at nothing.” Goethe, who reached his eighty-third year, is another good example. Then there is Boerhaave, one of the most celebrated physicians of modern times, who held that decent mirth is the salt of life. Indeed in the case of most old people, we believe it will be found that cheerfulness is one of their leading characteristics.
The recent death of Mr. Beecher, who with his splendid constitution ought to have lived twenty years longer, illustrates the principles of hygiene which he blindly disregarded. For years he was threatened with the form of death that seized him, and came near a fatal attack some years ago in Chicago while delivering a lecture. Men of a strong animal nature, hearty eaters, and restless workers, making great use of the brain, are liable to such attacks. If Mr. Beecher had observed ordinary prudence, and had a little scientific magnetic treatment, he would never have had an apoplectic attack; but he was commonplace in thought. He went the old way, and died as short-sighted men die. He had read my “Anthropology,” and told me he kept it in his library, but its thought did not enter into his life.
Justice to the Indians.
BY JOHN BEESON.
President Grant placed them under control of the churches, making them responsible for all their Indian agents, whom the churches were to nominate. But as fraud and war have been more or less as rampant as ever, it seems that the first thing should be, to relieve the Indians from church rule, and recognize at once the Indian’s inalienable right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” the same as we claim for ourselves; so long as they do not disturb the peace or violate the rights of their white neighbors, we have no right to interfere with either their religion or laws upon their reserves. It is this meddlesome injustice which makes all the trouble; it would make trouble with any other community, if another religious sect should be allowed to dominate over them in all their affairs. It is not Indian, but human, nature, to do so, the world over. Dr. Bland, editor of The Council Fire, says:
“I have been long and intimately acquainted with many tribes. I find that they are not savages, but the peers of white men, with great self-respect, a high sense of honor, and love of truth.”
Even the civilized tribes still retain their mutual confidence. Hence, they use no locks, no bolts nor bars, when absent from their homes; a stake in the ground, about three feet from the door, is a sufficient guarantee from intrusion. It would be deemed a reflection upon neighborly honor to lock a door in the Indian Territory. I was there when they built their first prison; they now number sixty thousand, most of whom have lived there forty years, and then, they said,
“The new railroad brought so many white renegades among us that we had to build a prison for them.”