g, no matter whether the razor
were sharp or blunt. They used to tell me that I wore a black bow tie
till it was not fit to wear. On the trains I slept a great deal. Sleep
is the great storage battery of life. Four days of the week I was on the
train. I rose every morning at six. The first thing I did was to glance
over the morning newspaper, to catch in this whispering gallery of the
world the life of a new day. First the cable news, then the editorials,
then the news about ourselves. I received the principal newspapers of
almost every big city in the morning mail I enjoyed the caricatures of
myself, they made me laugh. If a man poked fun at me with true wit I was
his friend. They were clever fellows those newspaper humorists. I
consider walking a very important exercise--not merely a stroll, but a
good long walk. Often I used to go from the Grand Central Depot in New
York to my home in Brooklyn. There and back was my usual promenade.
Seven miles should be an average walk for a man past fifty every day. I
have made fifteen and twenty miles without fatigue. I always dined in
the middle of the day. Contrary to "Combes' Physiology," I always took a
nap after dinner. In my boyhood days this was a book that opposed the
habit. Combes said that he thought it very injurious to sleep after
dinner, but I saw the cow lie down after eating, and the horse, and it
seemed to me that Combes was wrong. A morning bath is absolutely
indispensable. When I was in college there were no luxurious hot and
cold bath rooms. I often had to break the ice in my pitcher to get at
the water.

These were the habits of my life, formed in my youth, and as they grew
upon me they were the sinews that kept me young in the heart and brain
and muscle. My voice rarely, if ever, failed me entirely. In 1888, to my
surprise and delight, my western trips had become ovations that no human
being could fail to enjoy. In St. Paul, Duluth, Minneapolis, the crowds
in and about the churches where I preached were estimated to be over
twenty thousand. It was a joy to live realising the service one could be
to others. This year of 1888 was to be a climax to so many aspirations
of my life that I am forced to record it as one of the most important of
all my working years. No event of any consequence in the country, social
or political, or disastrous, happened, that my name was not available to
the ethical phase of its development. Newspaper squibs of all sorts
reflect this