havior of its handsomely attired but
boorish neighbor. And as for fighting, why, I verily believe a bluejay
in good condition could "do up" John L. Sullivan so quickly the gentle
pugilist would never know what struck him.

XXXIX.

GOOD HEALTH A BLESSING.

What roses are with worms in the bud, such are women without health.
There can be no beauty in unwholesomeness, there can be nothing
attractive in a delicate pallor caused by the disregard of hygiene, or
in a willowy figure, the result of lacing. If I could now and then
thread some particular bead on an electric wire that should tingle and
thrill wherever it touched, or write in a streak of zig-zag light
across the sky, I might, perhaps, compel attention to what I have to
say. There are certain laws of health which, if they only might be
regarded, would make us all as beautiful in outward seeming as we
strive to be, no doubt, in spirit. Ever so pure and lovely a soul in
an unhealthy body is like a bird trying to thrive and sing in an
ill-kept cage, or a flower blooming with a blight set deep within its
withering petals. You or I can serve neither heaven nor mankind
worthily if we disregard the laws of health, and bear about with us a
frail and poorly nurtured body. There are "shut in" spirits, to be
sure, captives from birth to pain, the record of whose patient
endurance of suffering sweetens the world in which they live, as a rose
shut within a dull and prosy book imparts to its pages a fragrance born
of summer and heaven; but such lives are the exception. The true
destiny of the sons and daughters of earth is to grow within the garden
of life as a sapling rather than as a sickly weed, developing timber
rather than pith, and yielding finally to death, the sharp-axed old
woodman, as the tree falls, to pass onward to new opportunities of
power and service. The tree does not decay where it stands, nor does
it often fall because its core is honeycombed by disease. It is cut
down in the meridian of its strength, because somewhere on distant seas
a new ship is to be launched and needs a stalwart mainmast, or a home
is to be builded that needs the fiber of strong and steadfast timber.
So, I think, with men and women, there would not be so much unsightly
growing old, with waning power and wasted faculties, if we attended
more strictly to the laws of health, and when death came to us at last
it should only be because there was need of good timber further on.