HORSE-BACK RIDING. 103 



already existing ailments, but as to its powers of pre- 

 vention. 



While the value of medicine as an art has often 

 been disputed, and the question raised whether, 

 proper allowance being made for the good or evil, 

 humanity would not fare just as well if left entirely 

 to nature's resources, the usefulness of hygiene has 

 never been questioned. Its rules and principles are 

 based on experience, its sole aim is the preservation 

 of health, its basis is admitted and its principles 

 are respected. It is hygiene which teaches us how 

 to live fully our life; for it has well been said that 

 man does not die — he kills himself. 



A misanthrope, analyzing human life, finds it to be 

 composed of three years of happiness, diluted with 

 sixty or eighty of pain, trouble, and ennui. Yet in 

 spite of the bitterness of the draught, how we dread 

 that supreme moment when the cup is to be taken 

 from our lips I 



It is generally thought that in the early ages of the 

 world, the earth, younger and more prolific in the 

 principles of life, produced stronger men than those 

 of the present day. Imagination, which delights in 

 the wonderful, implicitly believes all that tradition 

 hands down relating to the patriarchs of the Bible, 

 whose lives extended through several centuries. Mod- 

 ern science, after proving that the chronology of those 

 remote ages was very different from ours, has rectified 

 this mistake. 



