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The Old Stone Church."

man in prayer. His wife was one of the Lord's saints. She was goodness itself and a mighty power in talking." She was so spiritually-minded that she would talk out loud to herself about God's beautiful world, for she seemed to hear Him breathing in all His works. Her son James was herself over again, and his daughter Morilla was so spiritual that she seemed not to belong to this world and when she died she was perfectly aware of the presence of angels in her room. My gentle Grandfather, Oliver A. Willard, was the first, Uncle James Hill, second, and Cousin Henry Dusinbury, third and last clerk, of the Old Stone Church. Uncle Zophar Willard, Uncle Ward Hall, Cousins John and Sheldon Hill were all officially connected with it.

The 16th of April, 1888, was calm and sunshiny. Uncle Willard's beautiful home on the hill in the suburbs of Churchville gave us, as so often, its quiet shelter, and though we missed the loving smile, the wit and brightness of dear Aunt Caroline, his widowed sister, and so long his home-maker, we were thoroughly content in the care of the noble, genial uncle, who had 'done us good and not evil all the days of our lives. In the morning we went with him to the Congregational church in the village, of which he has so long been the leading spirit, and listened to the gifted young minister in whom his heart rejoiced. After dinner we drove "up North," where we had delightful calls in the pleasant, well-to-do homes of Aunt Sarah Hill Hall and Cousin Sarah Gilman Dusinbury. At three o'clock we all gathered at the church, a quaint old structure standing at the foot of a long, graceful slope on the top of which is the picturesque Willard homestead of auld lang syne. The present residents of the home, Mr. and Mrs. Way, with Cousin Sarah, had brightened and beautified the old sanctuary with an improvised setting for the platform, of carpet, easy chairs and potted plants. All the relatives and neighbors who yet remain, with many new ones, besides youth and maiden, boy and girl, not of our circle, packed the little church, and, Uncle Willard presiding, we sang the old hymns so often echoed by those walls from voices long since silent. "How firm a foundation, ye saints of the Lord," Guide me, O Thou great Jehovah," and "There is a land of pure delight," seemed to me tenderly to invoke the spirit of the sacred past. Then in rich tones full of pathos, my Cousin Saralı read

the ninetieth Psalm, "Lord, thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations," and the Churchville minister, Rev. Mr. McConnell, led in prayer with a brother's sympathy for all that the hour signified to us. After that I frankly told the kind people all my heart, taking, "The Master is come and calleth for thee," as a text, and setting what I tried to say to the key of

"We are traveling home to God,

In the way our fathers trod."

I told them what Christianity meant to my heart, and what I believed it meant to custom and law, to society and government. It stirred my spirit deeply as I realized in some small measure what it signified to testify as one of the cloud of witnesses who belonged to the same household of faith with those who within these walls had found and taught the unsearchable riches of Christ. Born of a Christian race, bred in a Christian home, I dedicated myself anew in the Old Stone Church that day to Christ and to His Gospel, vowing that by His grace I would be in this and every world where I might live, a woman whom the Lord could trust.

THE GOSPEL OF HEALTH.

It was my remarkably good fortune to be born of parents who were clean from the alcohol and tobacco taint, and, so far as I can trace my ancestry through several generations, there was but one intemperate person in the ranks, and he was a distant relative out of the direct line. It was also my unspeakable privilege, being "only a girl," to enjoy the utmost freedom from fashionable restraints up to my seventeenth year. Clad during three fourths of the year in flannel suits, not unlike those worn at "gymnastics" now by young lady collegians, and spending most of my time in the open air, the companion in work as well as in sport of my only brother, I knew much more about handling rake and hoe than I did of frying-pan and needle; knew the name and use of every implement used by carpenter and joiner; could chase the sheep all day and never tire; had a good knowledge of farming, gardening, and the like; was an enthusiastic poultry raiser, and by means of this natural, outdoor life, eight or nine hours' sleep in twenty-four, a sensible manner of dress, and the plain fare of bread and butter, vegetables, eggs,

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The Gospel of Longevity.

milk, fruit and fowl, was enabled to "store up electricity" for the time to come.

My parents lived five years at Oberlin before I was seven years of age, at the time when "Grahamites" were popular, and they became indoctrinated with many of the ideas of Dr. Jennings, whose "Water Cure" book my father was fond of reading. As a result, the three children were each promised a library, to cost $100, if we would not touch tea or coffee until we became of age. Subsequently I used both for years, very moderately, but have now almost discarded them. A physician was an unknown visitant to our home in early days. I have no recollection of such a personage being called for me before I was fourteen, and although my mother says that, when an infant, I was the feeblest of her children, I have outlived all the family except herself. My father died in his sixty-third year, and my mother is now in her eighty-fifth, her grandmother having lived to be nearly ninety-seven, and the ancestors on both sides being remarkable for their longevity.

I never saw the inside of a school-house until near my teens, but was encouraged to read and study somewhat at home, and always lived in an intellectual atmosphere, my parents and our few friends and neighbors being persons of education and earnestness of purpose. Although my first school was in a country district, the teacher was a graduate of Yale, and had been for years a classical tutor in Oberlin College. My parents were of Puritanical training as to Sabbath observance, and I count its rhythmic period of rest, as well as the late beginning of my school days, an element in the health antecedents here enumerated. I have written thus in detail of what might be popularly termed the "indirect reasons" for my life-long good health, because my study of the temperance question teaches me that heredity and early training are the most direct "procuring causes" of physical soundness.

I am now in my fiftieth year, and though, since sharing the great and varied disabilities of a more conventional life, I have had two acute illnesses and several slight ones, my health is so uniform that I have often laughingly told my friends I had composed the first line of my "great epic," and it is this:

"Painless, in a world of pain.”

The Eight-hour Law of Sleep.

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The chief wonder of my life is that I dare to have so good a time, both physically, mentally and religiously. I have swung like a pendulum through my years, "without haste, without rest." What it would be to have an idle hour I find it hard to fancy. With no headache, why should I not think "right straight ahead"? My whole life has been spent in intellectual activities, having begun to teach when about twenty years of age, and having pursued that difficult avocation with no set-back or breakdown until I dedicated myself to the Temperance Reform in 1874. (I should except about two years and a half of hard study, writing and travel in Europe and the East between 1868 and 1870.) In the last twelve years I have been perpetually "on the road," going 15,000 to 20,000 miles per year, visiting in 1883-every state and territory in the Union and holding a meeting once per day on an average throughout the entire period. It has been my custom to write articles and letters and plan work, all day long on the cars, being thus constantly employed, and then to give an address at night.

Now, I am aware that this is not a hygienic mode of procedure, and that to breathe car-air and audience-atmosphere, year in and year out, is not conducive to the best development. But it was the only way for me to reach the one thousand towns set as my "stint" (a farm fashion we had, this of "doing our stint," persisted in as an inherited tendency), and feeling so adequate to the day's doings, I went steadily on, taking the opportunity to recline in the quiet of my apartment, between the meetings, stating to my friends that visiting was impossible to me, and making it an invariable rule to go directly from the platform to my room. Here a cup of bread and milk, a cracker, or a few spoonfuls of beef-tea were taken in order to set up a counteraction to the movements of the brain, and I went to sleep a few minutes after going to my room, usually getting eight hours, in every twentyfour, of "tired nature's sweet restorer." A bright Chicago woman said to me when I told her this, "You acted according to the proverb, 'He who fights and runs away, may live to fight another day,' for I interpret that to mean, He who runs away promptly at nightfall from the day's warfare will live to plunge into the fight next morning, and so on from year to year, and will be a victor always.'"

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The Gospel of Exercise.

My rising hour has long been from seven to half-past (I wish it were earlier) and retiring anywhere from half-past seven to halfpast nine, but when traveling it has been about ten. I regard that hour as the dead line of recuperation, vigor and sustained mental activity." Eight hours of writing and study, all of them between breakfast and tea, has been my rule. After the evening meal at six o'clock I will not work-lecturing, of course, excepted. In this field I have studied the non-dramatic style, because it is less wearing and fully as well adapted to purposes of information and conviction. Illustrations can be used that involve but little acting, thus keeping the circulation normal, avoiding the exposures that attend perspiration, and the reaction resulting from undue fatigue.

My manner of life has recently been changed from peripatetic to stationary, and my purpose is, for the next ten years at least, should God spare my life so long, to live in my quiet cottage home at Evanston, in the suburbs of Chicago, with my mother and a dozen secretaries, and help to spread the temperance propaganda by pen instead of voice. I expect, as a rule, to sit at my desk from 8:30 or 9:00 A. M., until 6:00 P. M., daily, with a halfhour's interval from 12:30 to 1:00 o'clock, with the exception of an outing of about half an hour. The tricycle for open air purposes and Dr. Dio Lewis's home exerciser within doors, are my basis of gymnastic operations. Walking I delighted in when I could go unimpeded; but from the sorrowful day when my hair was first twisted up and long skirt twisted down, I have never enjoyed that noble form of exercise, and I have met very few women in this country who really walk at all. Wrigglers, hobblers, amblers, and gliders I am familiar with among the ways of women, but walking is an art hereditarily lost to our sex.

"Tis true, 'tis pity, and pity 'tis, 'tis true!"

I never touch the pen after tea, and ten o'clock finds our house dark as a pocket, silent as a tomb, and restful as a cradle. To this single fact more than all others, excepting fortunate inheritance, I attribute my life-long good health and cheery spirits.

I have not jotted down these personal items because I think my methods specially noteworthy or by any means faultless. Hoping that we may learn the health decalogue of our Heav