tal.

One is inclined to think with a recent writer that it looks as if the
rich men kept out of the kingdom of heaven were also excluded from the
kingdom of brains. In New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and Chicago are
thousands of millionaires, some of them running through three or four
generations of fortune; and yet, in all their ranks, there is seldom a
man possessed of the higher intellectual qualities that flower in
literature, eloquence, or statesmanship. Scarcely one of them has
produced a book worth printing, a poem worth reading, or a speech worth
listening to. They are struck with intellectual sterility. They go to
college; they travel abroad; they hire the dearest masters; they keep
libraries among their furniture; and some of them buy works of art.
But, for all that, their brains wither under luxury, often by their own
vices or tomfooleries, and mental barrenness is the result. He who
violates Nature's law must suffer the penalty, though he have millions.
The fruits of intellect do not grow among the indolent rich. They are
usually out of the republic of brains. Work or starve is Nature's
motto; starve mentally, starve morally, even if you are rich enough to
prevent physical starvation.

How heavy a bill Nature collects of him in whom the sexual instinct has
been permitted to taint the whole life with illicit thoughts and deeds,
stultifying the intellect, deadening the sensibilities, dwarfing the
soul!

"I waive the quantum of the sin,
The hazard of concealing;
But och, it hardens all within,
And petrifies the feeling."

The sense of fatigue is one of Nature's many signals of danger. All we
accomplish by stimulating or crowding the body or mind when tired is
worse than lost. Insomnia, and sometimes even insanity, is Nature's
penalty for prolonged loss of sleep.

One of the worst tortures of the Inquisition was that of keeping
victims from sleeping, often driving them to insanity or death.
Melancholy follows insomnia; insanity, both. To keep us in a healthy
condition, Nature takes us back to herself, puts us under the ether of
sleep, and keeps us there nearly one-third of our lives, while she
overhauls and repairs in secret our wonderful mechanism. She takes us
back each night wasted and dusty from the day's work, broken, scarred,
and injured in the great struggle of life. Each cell of the brain is
reburnished and refreshened; all the ashes or waste from the combustion
of the