It must suffice to say, that he continued to write me, once or twice a year, as long as he lived. He also insisted strongly on the importance of physiological information among students preparing for the ministry, and especially for missions. He even wrote once or twice to Rev. Dr. Anderson, and solicited attention to the subject. But the board would neither hear to him nor to me, except to speak kind words, for nothing effective was ever done. They even refused a well-written communication on the subject, intended for the Missionary Herald. Let me also say, that as early as March, 1845, he told me that Dr. Bradley, his associate (now in this country), with his family, were beginning to live on the vegetable system; and added, that one of the sisters of the mission, who was no "Grahamite," had told him she thought there was not one third as much flesh used in all the mission families that there was a year before.
Mr. Caswell became exceedingly efficient, over-exerted himself in completing a vocabulary of the Siamese language, and in other labors, and died in September last. He was, according to the testimony of Dr. Bradley, a "noble man;" and probably his life and health, and that of his family, were prolonged many years by his improved habits. But his early transgressions—like those of thousands—at length found him out. I allude to his errors in regard to exercise, eating, drinking, sleeping, taking medicine, etc.
MR. SAMUEL CHINN.
This individual has represented the town of Marblehead, Mass., in the state legislature, and is a man of respectability. He is now, says the "Lynn Washingtonian," above forty years of age, a strong, healthy man, and, to use his own language, "has neither ache nor pain." For the ten years next preceding our last account from him he had lived on a simple vegetable diet, condemning to slaughter no flocks or herds that "range the valley free," but leaving them to their native, joyous hill-sides and mountains. But Mr. Chinn, not contented with abstinence from animal food, goes nearly the full length of Dr. Schlemmer and his sect, and abjures cookery. For four years he subsisted—we believe he does so now—on nothing but unground wheat and fruit. His breakfast, it is said, he uniformly makes of fruit; his other two meals of unground wheat; patronizing neither millers nor cooks. A few years since, being appointed a delegate to a convention in Worcester, fifty-eight miles distant, he filled his pocket with wheat, walked there during the day, attended the convention, and the next day walked home again, with comparative ease.
FATHER SEWALL.
This venerable man—Jotham Sewall, of Maine, as he styles himself, one of the fathers of that state—is now about ninety years of age, and yet is, what he has long been, an active home missionary. He is a man of giant size and venerable appearance, of a green old age, and remarkably healthy. He is an early riser, a man of great cheerfulness, and of the most simple habits. He has abstained from tea and coffee—poisonous things, as he calls them—forty-seven years. His only drinks are water and sage tea. These, with bread, milk, and fruits, and perhaps a little salt, are the only things that enter his stomach. How long he has abstained from flesh and fish I have not learned, but I believe some thirty or forty years.
Such is the appearance of this venerable man, that no one is surprised to find in him those gigantic powers of mind, and that readiness to give wise counsel on every important occasion, for which he has so long been distinguished. It has sometimes seemed to me that no one would doubt the efficacy of a well-selected vegetable diet to give strength, mental or bodily, who had known Father Sewall.
MAGLIABECCHI,
An Italian, who died in the beginning of the eighteenth century, abjured cookery at the age of forty years, and confined himself chiefly to fruits, grains, and water. He never allowed himself a bed, but slept on a kind of settee, wrapped in a long morning gown, which served him for blanket and clothing the year round.
I would not be understood as encouraging the anti-cookery system of Dr. Schlemmer and Magliabecchi; but it is interesting to know what can be done. Magliabecchi lived to the age of from eighty to one hundred years.