But pending the discovery of some miraculous cure, the only help seemed to be in persistent care, self-control, and discipline. It was necessary to be careful as to eating, and here Darwin appears to have been generally abstemious, though he had a taste for sweets, which he sometimes indulged with humorous excuses and a clear prevision of the bad results that were likely to follow, and did. As to alcohol, even in his earlier years when boisterous excess in drinking was common enough, Darwin was not much inclined to anything of the sort. He does indeed tell of gay supper-parties, where too much wine was drunk. His son records his confession, in answer to a query as to early habits, that ‘he was ashamed to say he had once drunk too much at Cambridge.’[266] And Grant Duff mentions a curious remark, which seems well vouched for but is hard to believe: ‘Hooker, who is staying here, amused us by saying that Darwin had told him that he had got drunk three times in early life, and thought intoxication the greatest of all pleasures.’[267] Whether he thought so or not, he did not often indulge in it. And as he grew older, he abandoned wine almost entirely, so that when she was engaged his future wife could write: ‘I don’t think it of as much consequence as she does that Charles drinks no wine, but I think it a pleasant thing.’[268] He smoked cigarettes more or less, and found them restful, but he certainly did not overdo the habit. His favorite indulgence was snuff-taking, which was given up and renewed much after the fashion of Lamb’s tobacco. Of his efforts in this direction he writes, with humor: ‘I am personally in a state of utmost confusion also, for my cruel wife has persuaded me to leave off snuff for a month; and I am most lethargic, stupid, and melancholy in consequence.’[269] The chief element in Darwin’s care of his health, however, was persistent rest. All his days were systematically planned, the few hours that could be given to it set apart for work, and the rest devoted to some form of relaxation or needed repose. There were long nights, if not for sleep, at least for physical tranquillity, and there were afternoons and evenings spent largely on the sofa, in chat or in listening to music or to stories of purely diverting quality. Any interruption of this carefully arranged schedule was avoided, if possible, and almost always had to be paid for. Thus, by persistent, systematic, rigid self-control, and by sacrificing days and months and years to a comparatively tedious indolence, Darwin gained the few hours that were essential for the work that shook the world.