The familiar saying, "Not work, but worry, that kills," is a truth well worth remembering. The false impression generally prevails, however, that a life wholly devoted to intellectual work is usually not a long one. In 1898, James J. Walsh contributed to Annals of Hygiene a brief article in which he declared that the assumption seems to be that the drain upon vital nerve force, of years of continuous mental effort, exhausts nature's store of energy before its appointed time. He produced a necrological list for the previous year to show that men who devote themselves continuously to scientific investigation along certain lines in medicine do not pay for fame in shortness of life.

Mr. Walsh closes his article with this paragraph: "It is more than probable that, given a certain amount of vital energy, its conservation will be best studied by orderly, regular, and constant employment at some work that is at once absorbing in itself and satisfactory in its results. Work of itself, when not excessive, is a tonic and stimulant rather than a depressant of vital energy. Intellectual work, instead of being incompatible with the full cycle of allotted life to the organism, is rather an additional factor in securing the completeness of life by rounding out, developing, and satisfying the higher faculties."

Few men of his day did more brain work than John Wesley. His natural constitution was feeble. But aside from mastering the classics and becoming a linguist of no mean ability, he travelled 250,000 miles, mostly on horseback, and preached 42,500 sermons.

And yet this great evangelist of the eighteenth century was eighty-six years old before he became conscious of the infirmities of age. He ascribed his unusual vigor to constant exercise, his early rising, and his habit of daily preaching, morning and evening. When he was eighty he travelled from four to five thousand miles a year. Like Gladstone, Mr. Wesley could command sleep whenever he needed it.

In Mr. Wesley's eighty-second year he made this remarkable statement in his journal: "It is now eleven years since I have felt any such thing as weariness." At the same time he recorded beautiful impressions of nature and books more frequently. He went so far as to compare and criticise Ariosto and Tasso, and indulge now and then in dramatic reading and criticism. He was careful of his physical habits and had a perfect knowledge of the laws of hygiene. Once he said of himself that he never felt lowness of spirits for a quarter of an hour since he was bora.

We have a striking instance how intellectual work and longevity have gone hand in hand in the life of the Rev. Andrew Matthews of Gumley, Market Harborough, England, who died in 1897. Besides devoting much time to ministerial work, he had been an earnest student of natural history during the whole of his long life. His achievements while the snow of time was on his head were marvellous. In 1872, when fifty-seven years old, he published a work in Latin, called Trichopterygidae Illustrata, illustrated by himself with thirty-one plates, detailing the full anatomy of this family of almost invisible insects. It is a black beetle with narrow wings margined with hair, and is usually found among decaying vegetables. With the exception of the egg-parasite, it is perhaps the smallest insect known.

At the age of seventy-three Mr. Matthews prepared a comprehensive description of his favorite branch of natural history for the great American work on the Natural History of Central America. But what is most remarkable is that, in his eightieth year he completed a second volume of his work, fully illustrated by his own hand from microscopic dissections of these minute beetles.

After the publication of the first volume, Mr. Matthews, who had lost none of his youthful spirit, was offered the honor of the Fellowship of the Royal Society of England, which he modestly declined "lest his scientific acquirements should be estimated by the number of letters after his name."

Beranger, the greatest song-writer of France, is credited with saying that all good workmen live long. While this may not be literally true, it is suggestive. Men who train their minds with the wisdom that prudence dictates they should train their bodies, are slow in growing old physically or mentally.

Emerson says that a man of large employments and excellent performance once remarked to him that he did not think a man worth anything until he was sixty. This is not the belief of many employers nowadays; however, the man did not greatly stumble in his judgment.

The poet and essayist was charmed by the mental vigor of the men who had long passed the accepted age limit. He refers with evident pleasure to the fact that in the old governments the councils of power were composed of men old in years and strong in intellect. The patricians, senators, the presbytery of the Church, and the like, were old in age. And in naming some of the "seniors who feared no city, but by whom cities stand," Emerson tells of the remarkable career of blind Dandolo who was elected doge, or chief magistrate, of Venice "at eighty-four; stormed and captured Constantinople at ninety-four, and after the revolt was again victorious and elected at the age of ninety-six to the throne of the Eastern Empire, which he declined, and died doge at the age of ninety-seven."

But we need not go so far from home for shin ing examples of intellectual activity and longevity keeping company.

The career of John Quincy Adams is a remarkable piece of biographical history. He had been minister to five different European courts, Senator of the United States, eight years Secretary of State, four years President, and yet his fame was not fully established. In his Twenty Years in Congress, Mr. Blaine says that it may be fairly doubted whether if Adams' presidency had closed his public life, his fame would have attracted special observation. "But in his sixty-fifth year, when the public life of the most favored draws to a close, the noble and shining career of Mr. Adams began. He entered the House of Representatives in 1831, and for the remainder of his life - a period of seventeen years - he was one grand figure in that assembly. His warfare in favor of the right of the humblest to petition for redress of grievances is among the memorable events in the parliamentary history of the United States. It was in a large degree the moral courage of his position that first fixed the attention of the country, and then attracted its admiration."

As Gladstone won the title of "The Grand Old Man" by the distinguished service he rendered his Government and humanity after he had passed his sixtieth year, so Adams was not designated as "The Old Man Eloquent" until he was beyond sixty-five, the age at which the greatest part of his public career began.

It is amazing how much some men have accomplished and others are now accomplishing in the professions under conditions which would smite the average man with discouragement and utter inactivity. We read of Dr. Alonzo Garcelon, once Governor of Maine, attending strictly to his medical practice when he had passed his ninetieth year, and sometimes driving fifteen miles to minister to a patient. And John Frost Irving of New York, is in harness at ninety-two years. He began his career as an author seventy years ago by writing "Indian Sketches," and he still holds on to the pen.

James M. Hoppin, emeritus professor of the History of Art at Yale, neither works nor walks as though he is mid-way between eighty and ninety. His intellectual force is not impaired, and it was only four years ago that he wrote Great Epochs in Art History, a work of permanent value to art students.

Among the veterans of intellectual work, is the Rev. Joseph Glass Monfort, D.D., of Cincinnati. He began his ministerial labors and assumed the responsibility of editing a Pres byterian journal nearly seventy years ago. His life has been one of great mental activity. He is now ninety-five years old, but a short time since he was obliged to cease from writing and public speaking on account of the failure of his eyesight. His daughter, Mrs. H. B. More-head, writes me that her father is perfectly well except as to sight and hearing, "and is enjoying life very much, but of course misses the use of his eyes more than anyone can appreciate."

Oliver W. Gibbs is emeritus professor of Physics and Chemistry at Harvard, and although he is nearly eighty-three, he is the active President of the National Academy of Sciences. And there is Thomas Wentworth Higginson, whose brain has been wonderfully active for the past sixty years, and at four-score he is still busy writing and lecturing.

But one of the most striking examples of long continued professional service and mental activity despite bodily defects is found in the life of Mr. William E. Cramer. He was born in Waterford, New York, in 1817, and was graduated from Union College in 1838. From 1843 to 1847 he was engaged in editorial writing on The Albany Argus; and in the latter year he established The Daily Wisconsin at Milwaukee. From that time to his death, May twenty-first, 1905, a span of fifty-seven years, Mr. Cramer was the editor-in-chief of that paper.

There are those who are seized with the ridiculous notion that when a man reaches the age of discretion - say three or four score years - about the only thing for him to do is straightway to set his house in order. But the life of Mr. Cramer teaches that we ought not to magnify the discovery that we are growing old nor lament if we are fettered by physical imperfections. For thirty-five or forty years Mr. Cramer was without sight, and could hear only by the aid of a speaking-tube. But these bodily disadvantages, which would have hampered and made cowards of a large majority of professional men, did not discourage Mr. Cramer. In spite of these conditions he lived a large life. By energy and industry, by quick perception and remarkable powers of memory and judgment, he practically overcame these physical detriments.

In a note declining ah invitation to respond in person at a banquet given in honor of Washington's birthday, in 1905, Mr. Cramer said:

"I have been engaged fifty-seven years in Wisconsin in editing and publishing a daily, newspaper, and three years in the same vocation in Albany. I Lave therefore a record of sixty years of work as the editor of a daily newspaper, and I know that this embraces a longer period of continuous editorial work than has been achieved by any other person in the United States, and, without vanity, I can add, in the world. I must soon be called hence, and I want to reserve all my health and my strength to be embodied in my favorite newspaper, The Evening Wisconsin"

That Mr. Cramer accomplished so much under such depressing conditions, is a marvel.

Twice Mr. Cramer visited Europe in company with his wife, and his defect of sight and hearing did not prevent him from writing for his paper while on his journeys many graphic descriptions of men and things as he viewed them.

In Mr. Cramer's case, as in many others I have noted, his mental activity was his life.

Space fails me to tell of others who, having left more than eighty years behind them, seemingly unconscious of the time according to the calendar, are still vigorous and active in intellectual work.