“We die through violation of law. This violation is through ignorance, or is wilful. If we do away with ignorance and are willing to obey, we can live as long as we wish. Men only die when they are not fit to live. As long as a person’s body is useful, God preserves it. The body is renewed completely every seven years. This you were taught in school. Why should not this renewal continue? An infant has cartilage, but very little bone. Gradually the cartilage ossifies, until in old age the bones are brittle. This is caused by the deposits of lime which are being continually taken into the system. There is constant waste and constant repair in the human body. You know this full well, and you know that at night and in moments of repose the repair exceeds the waste. So where you were tired and ready to faint an hour ago, you are now strong. “When I was thirty years of age, and my body at its strongest and best, I adopted a simple plan of keeping the excess lime and deteriorating substances out of my system; so you see my flesh is strong yet, soft, for the muscles should not be hard and tense, but pliable. My bones are not brittle, but cartilage is everywhere where needed to form cushions for the articulations. I have not known pain for a century, for nature does her perfect work and the dead tissue is constantly carried off and replaced with new. Pain generally comes from deposits left in the body when they should be carried off. Rheumatism, you know, is only a deposit in the linings of the muscles; but I never think of my body until the subject is brought to my attention, and do not like to talk of it, as the theme is not profitable; but later I will tell you when you are able to understand, how to have the body throw off those excess substances and renew itself without limit.” Now lest some of my readers who are very young should imagine I was “in love” with this man let me say--not so! In the presence of The Man sex was lost. He was to me neither man nor woman, yet both; although he had that glorious faculty of joyous anticipation, which we see in children--so he was not only man and woman, but child. Yet in wisdom I felt him to be a prophet, and I myself was but a child. For after all we are but grown up children, and the difference between some grown people is no greater than that found among children and some men. With this man I was a child, and he seemed to regard me so, yet never talked down to me, and I have since discovered that sensible people do not talk baby talk to children, nor do they talk down to people who they imagine ignorant. Men who do this reverse the situation and become veritable ignorami themselves. Old John Foster, the horse-trainer, used to break horses for my father, and one day old John said to me, “Young lady, when you breaks a colt, don’t get scared yerself and then the colt won’t. Hitch him up just like he was an old hoss, and he will think he is one and go right along and never know when he was broke.”