I promised to give you some account of my habits of life, so far, at least, as regards diet, exercise, and occupation. I have reached a pretty advanced period of life, without the usual infirmities of old age, and with my strength, activity, and bodily faculties generally in pretty good preservation. How far this may be the effect of my way of life, adopted long ago, and steadily adhered to, is perhaps uncertain.
I rise early, at this time of the year about 5 1/2; in summer, half an hour, or even an hour, earlier. Immediately, with very little incumbrance of clothing, I begin a series of exercises, for the most part designed to expand the chest, and at the same time call into action all the muscles and articulations of the body. These are performed with dumb-bells, the very lightest, covered with flannel; with a pole, a horizontal bar, and a light chair swung around my head. After a full hour, and sometimes more, passed in this manner, I bathe from head to foot. When at my place in the country, I sometimes shorten my exercises in the chamber, and, going out, occupy myself for half an hour or more in some work which requires brisk exercise. After my bath, if breakfast be not ready, I sit down to my studies until I am called.
My breakfast is a simple one—hominy and milk, or in place of hominy, brown bread, or oat-meal, or wheaten grits, and, in the season, baked sweet apples. Buckwheat cakes I do not decline, nor any other article of vegetable food, but animal food I never take at breakfast. Tea and coffee I never touch at any time. Sometimes I take a cup of chocolate, which has no narcotic effect, and agrees with me very well. At breakfast I often take fruit, either in its natural state or freshly stewed.
After breakfast I occupy myself for awhile with my studies, and then, when in town, I walk down to the office of The Evening Post, nearly three miles distant, and after about three hours, return, always walking, whatever be the weather or the state of the streets. In the country I am engaged in my literary tasks till a feeling of weariness drives me out into the open air, and I go upon my farm or into the garden and prune the trees, or perform some other work about them which they need, and then go back to my books. I do not often drive out, preferring to walk.
In the country I dine early, and it is only at that meal that I take either meat or fish, and of these but a moderate quantity, making my dinner mostly of vegetables. At the meal which is called "tea," I take only a little bread and butter, with fruit, if it be on the table. In town, where I dine later, I make but two meals a day. Fruit makes a considerable part of my diet, and I eat it at almost any part of the day without inconvenience. My drink is water, yet I sometimes, though rarely, take a glass of wine. I am a natural temperance man, finding myself rather confused than exhilarated by wine. I never meddle with tobacco, except to quarrel with its use.
That I may rise early, I, of course, go to bed early: in town, as early as 10; in the country, somewhat earlier. For many years I have avoided in the evening every kind of literary occupation which tasks the faculties, such as composition, even to the writing of letters, for the reason that it excites the nervous system and prevents sound sleep.
My brother told me, not long since, that he had seen in a Chicago newspaper, and several other Western journals, a paragraph in which it is said that I am in the habit of taking quinine as a stimulant; that I have depended upon the excitement it produces in writing my verses, and that, in consequence of using it in that way, I had become as deaf as a post. As to my deafness, you know that to be false, and the rest of the story is equally so. I abominate all drugs and narcotics, and have always carefully avoided every thing which spurs nature to exertions which it would not otherwise make. Even with my food I do not take the usual condiments, such as pepper, and the like.
March 30, 1871. Hygiene of the Brain, New York, 1878.
DR. KING CHAMBERS, HONORARY PHYSICIAN TO H. R. H. THE PRINCE OF WALES.
"The physiology of the action of alcohol has a very practical bearing on the physical regimen of the mental functions. Alcohol has the power of curbing, arresting, and suspending all the phenomena connected with the nervous system. We feel its influence on our thoughts as soon as on any other part of the man. Sometimes it brings them more completely under our command, controls and steadies them; sometimes it confuses or disconnects them; then breaks off our power and the action of the senses altogether. The first effect is desirable, the others to be avoided. When a man has tired himself with intellectual exertion a moderate quantity of alcohol taken with food acts as an anaesthetic, stays the wear of the system which is going on, and allows the nervous force to be diverted to the due digestion of the meal. But it must be followed by rest from mental labour, and is, in fact, a part of the same regimen which enforces rest—it is an artificial rest. To continue to labour and at the same time to take the anaesthetic is an inconsistency. It merely blunts the painful feeling of weariness, and prevents it from acting as a warning. I very much doubt the quickening or brightening of the wits which bacchanalian poets have conventionally attributed to alcohol. An abstainer in a party of even moderate topers finds their jokes dull and their anecdotes pointless, and his principal amusement consists in his observation of their curious bluntness to the groundlessness of their merriment. There is no more fatal habit to a literary man than that of using alcohol as a stimulant between meals. The vital powers go on getting worn out more and more without their cry for help being perceived, and in the end break down suddenly, and often irrevocably. The temptation is greater perhaps to a literary man than to any other in the same social position, especially if he has been induced by avarice, or ambition, to work wastefully against them; and if he cannot resist it, he had better abjure the use of alcohol altogether…. Mental activity certainly renders the brain less capable of bearing an amount of alcohol, which in seasons of rest and relaxation does not injuriously affect it. When any extraordinary toil is temporarily imposed, extreme temperance, or even total abstinence, should be the rule. Much to the point is the experience of Byron's Sardanapalus:—