heartily when I first sported this Robinson
Crusoe habiliment. “ Never mind how you
look, Sir,” said my kind host ; “ his Majesty
himself God bless him ! if he had been left
here, as you were, could do no better.”
Exercise and temperance we all believe to
be greatly conducive to health. Five months’
residence on this island has convinced me of
their wonderful effects on the constitution.
Here our food is of the coarsest description
: bread we never see ; milk and
potatoes are our standing dishes ; fish we
have when we chance to catch them ; and
flesh when we can- bring down a goat. • In
order to procure materials to furnish forth a
dinner, I go early in the morning to the
mountains ; and the exertions I go through
make me ready to retire to bed by eight
o’clock in the evening, when I enjoy the
soundest sleep ; and though certainly I have
nothing here to exhilarate my spirits,—on the
contrary, much to depress them, as anxiety
for absent friends, who are ignorant of my
fate, and my irksome situation, thus shut out
from the world, — yet, in spite of every disagreeable,
I never enjoyed so calm and even
a flow of spirits, which is doubtless caused by
my abstemious living, and the exercise I am
obliged to take. These last four months’ experience
has done more to convince me of
the “ beauty of temperance” than all the
books that ever were written could have done.
I now begin to think the life of an anchorite
was not so miserable as is generally imagined
by the gay and dissipated, and that his quiet
enjoyments and serene nights may well be
balanced against their feverish slumbers and
palled appetites. The temperate man enjoys
the solid consolation of knowing he is not
wearing out his constitution, and may reasonably
look forward to a happy and respected
old age; while the votary of sense soon
loses all relish for former enjoyments, and
pays the penalty of early excesses in a broken
and diseased frame. He finds himself helpless,
and has the mortifying reflection that
he has only himself to blame; that he has
piloted himself into this misery, contrary to
his own common sense and the admonition
of his friends^ that no helping hand can save
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