Il6 MEMOIR OF THOMAS BEWICK. 



picturesque beauties and varying foliage of the 

 fading woods, with their falling leaves, and the 

 assembling in flocks of the small birds, put me in 

 mind of the gloomy months with which the year 

 is closed. 



This is the short account of many years of 

 uninterrupted health, buoyant spirits, and of great 

 happiness to me. I had begun betimes, and by 

 degrees, to habituate myself to temperance and 

 exercise, which hardened the constitution to such 

 a pitch that neither wet nor cold had any bad 

 effect upon me. On setting out upon my weekly 

 pedestrian "flights" up the Tyne, I never looked 

 out to see whether it was a good day or a bad 

 one; the worst that ever fell from the skies 

 never deterred me from undertaking my journey. 

 On setting out, I always waded through the first 

 pool I met with, and had sometimes the river to 

 wade at the far end. I never changed my 

 clothes, however they might be soaked with wet, 

 or stiffened by the frost, on my returning home 

 at night, till I went to bed. I had inured my- 

 self to this hardship, by always sleeping with 

 my windows open, by which a thorough air, as 

 well as the snow, blew through my room. In 

 this way, I lay down, stripped into "bare buff" 

 except being rolled in a blanket, upon a mattress 

 as hard as I could make it. Notwithstanding this 

 mode of treating myself, I never had any ailment, 

 even in the shape of a cold, while I continued to 

 live in this way ; nor did I experience any differ- 

 ence until, when I married, I was obliged to alter 

 my plans, and to live and behave like other folks. 

 If persons brought up and habituated to the tender 

 indulgences common in the world, and not trained 



