e than most people dare _even to think as yet_. "It rests with man
to say whether his soul shall be housed in a stately mansion of
ever-growing splendor and beauty, or in a hovel of his own building,--a
hovel at last ruined and abandoned to decay."

The bodies of almost untold numbers, living their one-sided, unbalanced
lives, are every year, through these influences, weakening and falling
by the wayside long before their time. Poor, poor houses! Intended to
be beautiful temples, brought to desolation by their ignorant,
reckless, deluded tenants. Poor houses!

A close observer, a careful student of the power of the thought forces,
will soon be able to read in the voice, in the movements, in the
features, the effects registered by the prevailing mental states and
conditions. Or, if he is told the prevailing mental states and
conditions, he can describe the voice, the movements, the features, as
well as describe, in a general way, the peculiar physical ailments
their possessor is heir to.

We are told by good authority that a study of the human body, its
structure, and the length of time it takes it to come to maturity, in
comparison with the time it takes the bodies of various animals and
their corresponding longevity, reveals the fact that its natural age
should be nearer a hundred and twenty years than what we commonly find
it today. But think of the multitudes all about us whose bodies are
aging, weakening, breaking, so that they have to abandon them long
before they reach what ought to be a long period of strong, vigorous
middle life.

Then, the natural length of life being thus shortened, it comes to be
what we might term a race belief that this shortened period is the
natural period. And as a consequence many, when they approach a
certain age, seeing that as a rule people at this period of life begin
to show signs of age, to break and go down hill as we say, they,
thinking it a matter of course and that it must be the same with them,
by taking this attitude of mind, many times bring upon themselves these
very conditions long before it is necessary. Subtle and powerful are
the influences of the mind in the building and rebuilding of the body.
As we understand them better it may become the custom for people to
look forward with pleasure to the teens of their second century.

There comes to mind at this moment a friend, a lady well on to eighty
years of age. An old lady, some, most people in fact, woul