An instance showing how one can take on age gracefully and increase his physical strength in advancing years is found in the life of Richard Henry Dana. There is peculiar interest in his case because in the first half of his life he was troubled with frequent periods of invalidism.

It may not be too great a digression to say that Mr. Dana was the father of Richard Henry Dana, Jr., who won the hearts of tens of thousands of American boys, and deeply interested sailors serving under many flags upon almost every sea, by his fascinating little book, Two Years Before the Mast, which was translated into many languages.

The elder Dana was distinguished as a scholar and an author. Until he was fifty years old, much of his time seems to have been devoted to the business of keeping himself out of the grave. His long period of invalidism was little more than an existence. He could hardly call it living, although he accomplished a fair amount of literary work.

On passing the half century line, a radical change took place in Mr. Dana's physical condition. His habits of life, though previously not seeming to be irrational, were revised. His body took on new powers; and up to the time of his death at Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1879, his intellectual vigor was fully maintained. His bodily activity during the old age period far surpassed that of his young manhood. The beautiful touches of fancy so frequent in his "Tales," written in his early years, were reflected in a large degree in his advanced age. He was a delightful old gentleman. What greatly attracted his friends was his graceful bearing and his serene faith. The last forty-two years, of his life were well worth living. He was ninety-two years old when he departed.

The facts associated with the later years of Mr. Dana's life suggest the career of Adam Ferguson, the historian of Rome and professor of philosophy at Edinburgh. At the age of fifty he began to reap the harvest of many years of conviviality. An attack of paralysis, which, it was said at the time, "ought to have killed him," led his friend Joseph Black to induce him to adopt a vegetarian diet, and to abstain from all intoxicants. After this he rarely dined out except with Black, and Ferguson's son Adam used to say that it was "delightful to see the two philosophers rioting over a turnip." But the "turnip" redeemed Ferguson from invalidism and he lived to celebrate his ninety-third birthday. He did much literary work after his fiftieth year. His old age was a splendid example of how simple living will prolong one's life and throw a stream of sunshine on his pathway. Ferguson was in full possession of his faculties to the year of his home-going and at no time during his life was he more graceful and entertaining than when he entered the nineties. He died the year following Waterloo, and Sir Walter Scott says that when Napoleon was at last and forever conquered, the news came to the aged patriot as a Nunc Dimittis.

A veteran of the Victorian era recently passed away in the person of George Frederick Watts - distinguished as a sculptor as well as a painter. When we need a fine example of what a man can do for himself in prolonging life and accomplishing great results, the story of Watt's career is a good thing to read.

Though Watts was in his eighty-fourth year when his death occurred in London in 1904, he was far from being superannuated or shelved by the younger generation of his profession. Some of the warmest tributes to his talents ever paid him were received just before he closed his career, from his brother artists who were not half his age. Portraits, symbolical paintings, and statuary came from his studio with a regularity that might indicate he was good for many more years of active and valuable service. One of the most striking of his recent exhibits is called "Physical Force," a colossal horse and rider, which went to South Africa as an ornament for the tomb of Cecil Rhodes.

Watts' picture, "Love and Life," painted when he was sixty-eight years old, and which the Woman's Christian Temperance Union sought to have removed from the White House at Washington, has found an abiding place in the private apartments of the President.

But the sermon of Watts' life is in the care he took of his bodily health. As late as 1903, when asked to explain the secret of his health, cheerfulness, and power in his advanced years, he said:

"Being naturally sickly, I had orders to take care of my body. I have never smoked. Greater things were done in the world, immeasurably greater, before tobacco was discovered, than have ever been done since. The cigarette is the handmaid of idleness. I do not say that possibly it may not be a sedative to overwrought nerves, but over-wrought nerves in themselves are things that ought not to be. Of wine I have taken very little. In my earlier years I used to take a little, but for a long time have never touched any form of alcohol. At meals I never drink anything, even water. Tea - yes, in moderation. And so, with regard to food I have been compelled to be very abstemious - to eat moderately and of simple food; to go to bed early (nine o'clock, for the most part), to rise with the sun, to avoid violent exercise, and to enjoy plenty of fresh air."

The oft repeated statement that a man may die old at thirty or young at eighty finds corroboration in the life of the Rev. Henry Griggs Weston, D.D., LL.D., President of Crozer Theological Seminary, Chester, Pennsylvania. The history of his case is as interesting as that of Dana, Ferguson, and Watts. I will let the doctor tell his own story, which was given out in September, 1904:

"When I was thirty years old I broke down so that for two months I did not speak a loud word, and everybody thought I was going to die. I didn't die, but the following summer I was not able to do any work and I had time to think how a man ought to live.

"I made up my mind and formed my plans, which I have followed ever since. And I have done a great deal of work. I can't speak as to the quality of it, but the quantity has been all that I can ask.

"The first absolute necessity of life is air to the lungs, and so I began that summer the practice of filling my lungs every day for half an hour at a time with fresh air, the best I can find. That custom I have followed ever since, and every day now I see that my lungs are expanded to their full capacity with the best air obtainable.

"The second principle I adopted was that the sun is the source of health, and I can look out from the room where I sleep and the room that I occupy at the sun shining.

"The third principle is that God made night for sleeping. It is my duty to sleep when the night comes, and it is my duty to get up in the morning when the morning comes, and I dropped all night work. I had my regular hours, to which I adhered, for sleeping, for eating, and for work, and I did not suffer them to be broken in upon except by absolute necessity." When the doctor was questioned as to his food, he said: "I did not diet myself more than this - that I am a small eater, have no love for high living, and do not eat rich food."

As to the matter of smoking he remarked: "In 1846 I broke off smoking. I had smoked and used tobacco for eight years then. I was an excessive smoker. When I got out of tobacco, often I would ride ten miles to lay in a stock. I made up my mind that I would not be a slave to the habit, and I quit it."

Dr. Weston has been President of the Theological Seminary for thirty-seven years. He is in his eighty-fifth year, and keenly relishes a walk of from one to three miles daily.