We are really richer than we think. We often hear of Earth hunger. People envy a great Landlord, and fancy how delightful it must be to possess a large estate. But, as Emerson says, "if you own land, the land owns you." Moreover, have we not all, in a better sense--have we not all thousands of acres of our own? The commons, and roads, and footpaths, and the seashore, our grand and varied coast--these are all ours. The sea-coast has, moreover, two great advantages. In the first place, it is for the most part but little interfered with by man, and in the second it exhibits most instructively the forces of Nature. We are all great landed proprietors, if we only knew it. What we lack is not land, but the power to enjoy it. Moreover, this great inheritance has the additional advantage that it entails no labor, requires no management. The landlord has the trouble, but the landscape belongs to every one who has eyes to see it. Thus Kingsley called the heaths round Eversley his "winter garden;" not because they were his in the eye of the law, but in that higher sense in which ten thousand persons may own the same thing. [1] Epictetus. [2] Ruskin. [3] Emerson. [4] Solomon. CHAPTER III. HEALTH. "Health is best for mortal man; next beauty; thirdly, well gotten wealth; fourthly, the pleasures of youth among friends." SIMONIDES. CHAPTER III HEALTH. But if there has been some difference of opinion as to the advantage of wealth, with reference to health all are agreed. "Health," said Simonides long ago, "is best for mortal man; next beauty; thirdly, well gotten wealth; fourthly, the pleasure of youth among friends." "Life," says Longfellow, "without health is a burden, with health is a joy and gladness." Empedocles delivered the people of Selinus from a pestilence by draining a marsh, and was hailed as a Demigod. We are told that a coin was struck in his honor, representing the Philosopher in the act of staying the hand of Phoebus. We scarcely realize, I think, how much we owe to Doctors. Our system of Medicine seems so natural and obvious that it hardly occurs to us as somewhat new and exceptional. When we are ill we send for a Physician; he prescribes some medicine; we take it, and pay his fee. But among the lower races of men pain and illness are often attributed to the presence of evil spirits. The Medicine Man is a Priest, or rather a Sorcerer, more than a true Doctor, and his effort is to exorcise the evil spirit.