using any exercise that can fatigue a man in the smallest derive, or throw him into a sweat, or accelerate his respiration. He gravly observes that trees live longer than animals, because they do not stir from their places. About the same time Asgill, a French writer, undertook to prove that man is literally immortal, or rather that any given living man might probably never die, if he used sufficient prudence, and a forcible exercise of the will. He complains of the cowardly practice of dying, considering it a mere trick, or unnecessary habit.
XCV. I copy from my manuscript of the Ansairetic Mvsterv, a medico-religio, and mystic composition of mine upon the same general subject as this book, but which, as it expounds certain very delicate facts and principles, adapted only to the mature, and therefore for private study—the following paragraph—stating, before I do so, that while alive and able, such of my patrons and patients as need that now widely famous letter, can write for it; but in no case will it be sent save under seal, as a private message from physician and teacher to patient and pupil; and genuine candidates for full, true, noble Man and Womanhood:—
"Wherever you see a rich, jouissant, beauty, spirit or power in a boy or girl; wherever you behold force of genius, you may rest assured that the conception of which they are the result, occurred when their parents both loved and were impassioned. Au contrarie:—whenever you come across genuine meanness, lean, weazelish, deceitful, slanderous, lying, scrawny, white-livered people, grab-allish. selfish, and accursed, generally, you may safely wager your very life that such beings were begotten of force, and were mothered by passionless, sickly, used-up wives, without the slightest danger of perilling your stake!"
XCVI. The best people on earth see the most trouble: while the heartless, dry and mean go on to success swimmingly, and never feel a soul-pang from the cradle to the grave; yet. nevertheless, true men and women arc never failures! Sham ones always are! because the good influence survives, the bad dies out. The good, when they enjoy, do so intensely; but the bad, coarse being's life, in all its phases must be on a par with—him or herself: and there's as
