Temperance in diet, like temperance in other matters, leads to good results, and our physiological evidence points out plainly, like a signpost all can read, that there is no demand on the part of the body for such quantities of food as custom and habit call for. Healthfulness and longevity are the prizes awarded for the successful pursuance of a temperate life, modelled in conformity with Nature’s laws. Intemperance, on the other hand, in diet as in other matters, is equally liable to be followed by disaster. A physician of many years’ experience, with opportunities for observation among different classes of people, has written, “that overeating tends to shrink the span of life in proportion as it expands the liver is demonstrable both directly and indirectly. Let any actuary of life-insurance be asked his experience with heavy-weight risks, where the waist measures more than the chest, and the long-drawn face of the businessman, at memory of lost dollars, will make answer without need of words. Then let be noted the physique of the blessed ones that attain to green old age, and, in nine cases out of ten, spry old boys--no disparagement, but all honor in the phrase--will be found to be modelled after the type of octogenarian Bryant or nonogenarian Bancroft--the whitefaced, wiry, and spare, as contrasted with the red-faced, the pursy, and the stout. It is true, as has already been mentioned, that in old age much of an adventitious obesity is absorbed and disappears, but the Bryant-Bancroft type is that of a subject who never has been fat at all. And just such is preëminently the type that rides easily past the fourscore mark, reins well in hand, and good for many another lap in the race of life.”[76] [76] Edward Curtis, M.D.: Nature and Health, p. 70. Henry Holt & Company, New York, 1906.