On the
1st of August, 1863, I smoked three cigars and used twenty-five
centimes (2-1/2d.) worth of snuff; from the following day to June,
1882, I have neither taken a pinch of snuff nor smoked a single
cigarette.
It was for me a complete resurrection, not only of memory, but of
general health and well-being. It was only necessary for me to do,
what I did eighteen years later, to lessen nearly one-half the
quantity of food which I took every day, to eat less meat and more
vegetables, to obtain such incomparable health, of which it is hardly
possible to form any idea, unlimited capacity of labour, perfect
digestion, absence of wrinkles, pimples; and I beg leave to affirm
that those who tread in my footsteps will be as sound as I am. Add to
this the habit, irrevocably established, of never saying, I
_shall_ do, nor I am doing, but I _have done_, and you have
the secret of the enormous amount of work I have been able to
accomplish, and am accomplishing every day, in spite of my eighty
years. Nobody will dispute me the honour of being the greatest
hard-working man of my century.
I ought, finally, to add that I find it well for me to take at
breakfast a small half-cup of coffee without milk, to which, when only
two or three teaspoonful remain at the bottom of the cup, I add a
small spoonful of brandy, or other alcoholic liquor. That is my whole
allowance of stimulants. How happy would those be who should adopt my
_regime_.
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