198 STATE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE, 



live at peace with all men."' We do not need a great variety at each meal, but 

 what we do have should be cooked in the highest style of the art. 



It is found that sorrow, anxiety, grief, and anger are each and all strong 

 breaks upon the digestive functions. Such passions clieck the secretions, 

 hinder digestion, and induce dyspepsia. On tlie other hand joy and mirth 

 and all pl^surable emotions quicken the bodily functions, so that even the 

 stomach and other viscera laugh at the work of liquefying the food, and dys- 

 pepsia finds no foothold. Good nature and a happy spirit at the table, are 

 indeed the very best condiments, and will do far more to promote digestion 

 than will indefinite mandrake pills, or even quantities of bottled up pepsin. 

 Do not think that the good wife or daughter, who, with deft fingers makes 

 the table upon which she spreads the daily repast so beautiful that it is a joy 

 to sit around it, is foolishly employed. Wise, too, is that father and blessed 

 his family if his good example malces the clean coat hide the sweaty, dirt- 

 begrimed shirt, at each meal time. Such home courtesy as is betokened by 

 the ever donning of the coat at the daily meals means more than directly 

 added pleasure, it means added health. 



As already suggested, the nervous organism is the most delicate, easily 

 disturbed, and yet the most important part of the body. It is to the system 

 what the wires are in telegraphy. Most to be commiserated is that person 

 whose nerves tingle with irritation, at every passing breath, and tear and 

 lacerate, even at the beck of imagination. 



Sleep, full and ample, is the great conservator of nervous force. Most of 

 us need full eight hours of this God-given elixir. Do your eyelids fairly fight 

 the will power that strives to open them at the dawn of the morning? Then 

 take more sleep. Does every drowsy nerve, in languid utterance, I'ebel as the 

 morning clock-stroke calls to action? Then go to bed earlier. Do the tired 

 energies refuse sleep when you betake yourselves to bed? Then work less and 

 sleep more. Many an indulgent but very foolish parent hurries his children 

 on to nervous imbecility by permitting them to retire at all hours, and thus 

 rob the body of the needed rest. This breaks up all regularity of rising and 

 eating, and makes the fiendish god of disease dance with joy. Kichardson 

 well sajs, "Sure am I that no man, however strong, seeks sleep at irregular 

 times, or for diminished space of time, without paying the penalty in reduction 

 of energy, and in shortness of life. Let none of us dare indulge habits that 

 shall become the Glamis that hath murdered sleep," 



It is well known to physiologists that freshly injured cells are quick to 

 mend, while those long diseased become sluggish, and refuse often to heal at 

 all. As I am urging towards habits that shall carry the vigor and bouyancy 

 of youth into old age, let me urge you all never to dally with acute troubles 

 till they become changed into that ruthless plague, chronic disease. Hope 

 and ambition are often two terrible enemies; they cause us to pay little heed 

 to the cough, the ill digestion, the troublesome headache, or the inflamed eyes, 

 till alas ! we are bound down by a life-long malady, or hurried out of the 

 world at the dawn of manhood, when a little care or a few days rest would 

 have carried us hearty and strong to a vigorous old age. If position or gain, 

 hope or ambition, ever urge you to neglect disease in its incipiancy, regard 

 them as the ofi'ending eyes, and pluck them out, or the evil hand, and cut it 

 off. 



In my schedule for this lecture, I had planned to close with an arraignment 

 of those two arch murderers of our time, whisky and tobacco. I wish I had 

 time to point out how they too often walk hand-in-hand in the black, horrid 



