Physical vigor is also the best guarantee of longevity. Nature exempts the children of the south from many cares; yet in the stern climes of the higher latitudes Health seems to make her favorite home; in spite of snowstorms and bitter frosts the robust Scandinavian outlives the languid Italian. In spite of a rigorous climate, I say, for that his length of life is the reward of hardy habits is proved by the not less remarkable longevity of the hardy Arab and the manful Circassian, in climes that differ from that of Norway as Mexico and Virginia differ from Labrador. Men of steeled sinews overcome disease as they brave the perils of wars and the hardships of the wilderness; hospital-surgeons know how readily the semi-savages of a primitive borderland recover from injuries that would send the effeminate city-dweller to the land of the shades. Toil-hardened laborers, too, share such immunities. On the 25th of March, 1887, Thomas McGuire, the foreman of a number of laborers employed at the night-shift of the Croton Aqueduct, fell to the bottom of the pit, a distance of ninety-five feet, and was drawn up in a comatose condition, literally drenched in his own blood. At the Bellevue Hospital (city of New York) the examining surgeon found him still alive, but gave him up for lost when he ascertained the extent of his injuries. Both his arms were broken near the shoulder, both thighs were fractured, his skull was horribly shattered about the left temple and frontal region, six of his ribs were broken and their splinters driven into the lungs. There seemed no hope whatever for him, and, after the administration of an anesthetic, he was put in a cot and left alone to die. To the utter surprise of the attending surgeon, the next morning found the mass of broken bones still breathing. His fever subsided; he survived a series of desperate operations, survived an apparently fatal hemorrhage, and continued to improve from day to day, till about the middle of June he recovered his complete consciousness, and was able to sit up and answer the questions of the medical men who, in ever increasing numbers, had visited his bedside for the last three weeks. As a newspaper correspondent sums up his case: “His strong constitution had repulsed the assaults of death, till finally the grim monster went away to seek a less obstinate victim.” And, moreover, the exercise of athletic sports lessens the danger of such accidents: a trained gymnast will preserve his equilibrium where a weakling would break his neck.