"It is no credit to me for being an abstainer. The credit is due to my father, who gave up smoking, drinking, intoxicating drinks, and eating meat at the same time, about twenty years ago; and as I was only ten years old then, I naturally grew into my father's habits (I now eat meat, however). The blessings of that reform have come down upon my children." Sherlock's _Heroes in the Strife_. COLONEL THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON. "I have been a busy worker with the brain all my life, and have enjoyed very unusual health. I am now fifty-three, and have not been confined to the house by illness since I was seventeen, except for a short time during the war, when suffering from the results of a wound. This favourable result I attribute to (1) a good constitution--and an elastic temperament; (2) simple tastes, disinclining me to stimulants and narcotics, such as tea, coffee, wine, spirits, and tobacco; (3) a love of athletic exercises; (4) a life-long habit of writing by daylight only; (5) the use of homoeopathic medicines in the early stages of slight ailments. I have never been a special devotee of health, I think, but have followed out my natural tastes; and have certainly enjoyed physical life very much. It may be well to add that, though, as I said, my constitution was good and my frame always large, I had yet an unusual number of children's diseases, and have often been told that my life was several times preserved, in infancy, against all expectation, by the unwearied care and devotion of my mother. This may encourage some anxious parents." Nov. 11, 1877. _Hygiene of the Brain_, N.Y., 1878. WILLIAM HOWITT. I have read with very great pleasure the letter of Mr. Bryant.... Let me observe that while the modes of my own life and those of Mr. Bryant very much accord, in a few particulars they differ, as, I suppose, must be the case in almost any two individuals. Mr. Bryant never takes coffee or tea. I regularly take both, find the greatest refreshment in both, and never experienced any deleterious effects from either, except in one instance, when, by mistake, I took a cup of tea strong enough for ten men. On the contrary, tea is to me a wonderful refresher and reviver. After long-continued exertion, as in the great pedestrian journeys that I formerly made, tea would always, in a manner almost miraculous, banish all my fatigue, and diffuse through my whole frame comfort and exhilaration, without any subsequent evil effect.