The greatest gift to man is a long healthy life. If there be anything more valuable than life, it is sound health. It is wonderful that the envious see not the blessing of good health. No man appreciates the worth of health until he is afflicted with disease. If your dinner is light, your dreams will be pleasant. So long as the head is free from trouble, the body will be sound. YOUTH AND OLD AGE An old man among his people is like a prophet sent from God. To venerate old age is to revere God. Youth is a kind of madness. The wisest young men are they who follow the good example of the old, and the most foolish old men are they who follow the bad example of the young. It is the duty of every one to be tender to the young and respectful to the old. An old man should not give up his old habits, nor take to new ones. An old man speaks of what he has seen, and a young man speaks of what he has heard. Grey hairs are a sign of wisdom, and are beautified by reverence. A hoary head is a rich cream churned by long years. Grey hairs are a message from the other world. After old age there is nothing but infirmity or death. An old man cries out, "O that youth would return for a day, that I might relate to it what the roll of years has done to me!" The hair often becomes white, not from the succession of years, but from a succession of evils. Life is a parting shadow and youth a departing guest. When a young man says he is hungry, believe him; but when he says he is tired, do not believe him. DEATH All life ends in death. When I see all paths leading men unto death, and no paths leading from death unto us--no traveller there ever returning--not one of ages past ever remaining--I see that I also shall assuredly go where they have gone. If death be surely inevitable, be not a fool and die a coward's death. Death is a cup which every man must drink, and the grave a door which every man must enter. If we are hastening to death, why all this impatience with the ills of life? This life is a sleep, the life to come is a wakening; the intermediate step between them is death, and our life here is a disturbed dream. He who dreads the causes of death, they will surely seize him--do what he will to evade them. Death, so far as one can see, strikes at random, killing the man whom he hits, and leaving the man whom he misses to old age and decrepitude. Death covers all faults. APPENDIX WHAT IS RIGHTEOUSNESS?