In closing this chapter we wish to call attention to a reasonable result of true system, or regularity. Here is a _convict_ in the State prison. Before he was incarcerated his health was imperfect, and he wore a sallow, dejected look; but behold him after six months of strict penitentiary discipline; he is a well man, fat and sleek--no longer a semi-invalid. There are exceptions, but they are due to melancholy generally. A _soldier_ after he enlists, unless he is exposed to the constant privations of protracted war, throws off most defects in his physique. You must know the cause; it is the compulsory regulation of diet and clothing. Cleanliness and regularity are forced upon them, showing it to be just what they needed. CHAPTER III. "Let health my nerves and finer fibers brace." The possession of health, happiness, and longevity requires _not_ so much a general literary and _scientific education_, as a _practical knowledge_ of one's own self. The latter will far outweigh the other. In many ways, however, will these qualities be improved by the former. A person must know what is regularity, cleanliness, and temperance, or moderation. By the use of these effective auxiliaries, I have freed myself of so many maladies within the last thirty years that the average medical devotee will laugh in derision and question my trustworthiness. For the first _eleven_ years of my life I had _seven_ years of wasting sickness. Of these, _five_ were spent in bed. At the age of 22 I left a clerkship in New York City to come to California, _via_ Cape Horn. _Consumption_ was strongly seated on my lungs. In addition to this dangerous affliction I had bronchitis, catarrh, constipation, piles, periodical rheumatism, cataracts on my eyes, corns on my feet, and fever and ague from one to three months every year. Surely I was in a position to sympathize with _Job_, but impatient, rather than patient like the Biblical hero. I set myself towards absolute health. Before I had been in this State two years, I gained the mastery of the lung and throat troubles; but while assisting in putting in a flume in Feather River, below Oroville, in 1859, I ruptured myself so that for twenty-five years I wore a truss. Now I am entirely rid of the aforementioned list of ailments, including hernia.