W 
 
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 HOW TO LIVE 1 00 YEARS 
 
 Dedicated to my best chum, comrade 
 and sweetheart, my wife 
 
 BY 
 G. H. LOCKWOOD 
 
 Editor of 
 "THE BILLY GOAT" 
 
 THIS IS MY DUTY 
 
 "To use what gifts I have as best I may ; 
 
 To help some weaker brothers where I can ; 
 To be as blameless at the close of day 
 
 As when the duties of the day began ; 
 To do without complaint what must be done ; 
 
 To grant my rival all that may be just ; 
 To win through kindness all that may be won, 
 
 To fight with knightly valor when I must." 
 
 By S. E. KISER. 
 
 LOCKWOOD PUBLISHING CO. 
 Kalamazoo, Mich.
 
 G. H. LOCKWOOD
 
 A PERTINENT QUESTION 
 
 After reading the title, "How to Live One Hundred 
 Years," you may feel a mental urge to ask the author if he 
 expects to live that long. 
 
 I am going to reply candidly that I do not. 
 
 I will qualify this reply, however, with this statement, 
 that had my parents and my teachers understood this prob- 
 lem of health as I now do, and taught me what I now know 
 and have put in this book, I would then be reasonably cer- 
 tain, barring accident, thrt I would pass the one-hundred- 
 mile post. The physical machine that I am now running tr.d 
 some very rough usage before I got sense enough to take 
 care of it properly, and before I could have taken care of it, 
 during the period of infancy it was probatly injured even 
 more. 
 
 Just recently on a warm and very pleasant day in mid 
 October I was riding on a street-car. A young mother was 
 on that car with her baby, perhaps two months old. She had 
 the poor little fellow all wrapped up in a heavy woolen 
 shawl which was drawn over its face and the corners care- 
 fully tucked in so that not one bit of fresh air could reach 
 her precious darling. Every once in a while she would take 
 a peep inside to see if it was alive a very wise precaution, 
 for I dare say that had she not done this, allowing a little 
 fresh air to enter occasionally, that baby would have been 
 smothered. I don't expect that child to live one hundred 
 years, in fact, it will be a miracle if he passes thirty-five. 
 
 What I personally contend in this matter is this, that be- 
 cause of my present knowledge of how to live right I will be 
 able to live many, many years longer than I otherwise would 
 live had this knowledge not come to me and this is 
 all that I can offer to you. But we can make it possible for 
 our children and our children's children to live their full 
 allotted life, live it in possession of vigorous manhood and 
 womanhood, live it in the joy that comes from health alone 
 which is more desirable than rubies and diamonds and fine 
 gold. 
 
 G. H. LOCKWOOD.
 
 Eat, drink, and be merry and die tomorrow!
 
 The, 
 Individual 
 
 Supremacy 
 
 <7~> 
 
 INTRODUCTORY 
 
 In spite of the fact that the Bible gives many ac- 
 counts of people who lived to be far past the century 
 mark, even Christians of this day are inclined to ques- 
 tion the correctness of the statements. 
 
 In Genesis 5 : 5 we read : "And all the days that 
 Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years; and 
 he died." 
 
 Seth, Adam's first son, is recorded to have lived 
 nine hundred and twelve years. Enos, Seth's son, 
 lived nine hundred and five years, while Methuselah 
 broke the record at nine hundred and sixty-nine years 
 whatever else may be said regarding the matter, he 
 was certainly old enough to vote. 
 
 If you accept this record as authentic, the claim 
 that I am making that the average life of the race to- 
 day should be not less than one hundred years is in- 
 deed modest. But if you choose to question the mat- 
 ter of the Bible record and ask for some proof that is
 
 6 HOW TO LIVE ONE HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 more related to our own time, this can be furnished in 
 abundance. 
 
 If no one had ever passed the one-hundred-mile 
 post except in Bible history, there might be some 
 ground for the skeptics to question my claim that 
 men should live to that age. In an article in the 
 November, 1912, issue of Technical World Magazine, 
 by Dr. F. C. Walsh (read by the author after the 
 manuscript for this book was in type), we find nu- 
 merous modern instances of longevity cited. 
 
 Dr. Walsh states that in France alone there are 
 over one hundred and fifty people each year who cele- 
 brate their one hundredth or more birthday. In 
 Greece, he states, over fifteen hundred people are re- 
 ported to reach annually the age of one hundred 
 years. I am quoting directly from this article: 
 
 "There are conspicuous instances of individuals 
 who have lived far beyond the century mark. Take the 
 case of one Drakenberg, a Norwegian sailor who fol- 
 lowed the seas for ninety-one years, and then, becom- 
 ing tired of a sea-faring life, retired to a fishing vil- 
 lage, where he stubbornly held on to life until he was 
 a hundred and forty-six. In Hungary, a farmer 
 named Pierre Zornay superintended his crops until he 
 died at the age of one hundred and eighty-five. 
 Thomas Parr, an English peasant, worked hard until 
 he was a hundred and thirty, and then continued to 
 live until he reached a hundred and fifty-two. This 
 instance was vouched for by Dr. Harvey, the eminent 
 discoverer of the circulation of the blood. He exam- 
 ined old Parr's body after death, and could find no 
 traces of any organic disease. Just there lies an im- 
 portant point. Scientific hopes are based on the fact 
 that if we can escape the accidental diseases of life,
 
 INTRODUCTORY 7 
 
 such as pnuemonia and tuberculosis, and that by fol- 
 lowing a special course of regime planned for the sole 
 purpose of arriving at a vigorous old age, there will 
 be no reason to doubt that the average person will live 
 to be a hundred, at the very least." 
 
 "Neither a wonderfully endowed constitution, nor 
 heredity, explains such instances as that of Thomas 
 Parr, though he left a son who attained the ripe age 
 of one hundred and twenty-seven, retaining all his 
 mental faculties to the end. But environment and the 
 same habits and mode of living would seem to count 
 for more than anything else. All through Europe, and 
 particularly in eastern Europe, old couples are nu- 
 merous, and the fact that two very old people attain 
 old age together, even when their parents died young, 
 eliminates the hereditary factor, and points very 
 strongly to habit and dietary influence." 
 
 The statements above quoted strongly substantiate 
 the claim of the author of this book that the race is 
 committing suicide by living in an unhealthy environ- 
 ment and by disobedience to known laws of the phys- 
 ical organism, and that the average life of man should 
 not be less than one hundred years, with "old age" 
 passing close to the two-century mile post. 
 
 With such positive proof as this, is it not worth 
 while, dear reader, that you take heed and give the 
 ideas herein presented your most thoughtful consid- 
 eration ? 
 
 If life is at all worth while, the older one grows 
 the more worth while it should become. Men should 
 be in their prime, both physically and mentally, at 
 from sixty to ninety years. Just think of the race of 
 intellectual giants we would be if all these mature 
 years beyond the miserable average stint of thirty-
 
 8 HOW TO LIVE ONE HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 five, as it now is, would be added to our lives. Just 
 think of an Edison at ninety or one hundred years in 
 the full possession of his mental faculties. 
 
 This idea that the "good" die young is foolish; 
 it is the ignorant that die young, or at least it is 
 through ignorance and a wrong environment that the 
 race dies young; and it must be through intelligence 
 and obedience to the physical laws of our being that 
 the race will attain to its full stature of development 
 and its full average years of life. 
 
 That there must be some decided changes in the 
 methods of living in order to reach the desired goal 
 is apparent. We certainly can't keep right on living 
 the way we have been living, and not expect to keep 
 on dying the way we have been dying. If some of the 
 rules of health given herein seem drastic and startling, 
 let it be known that the situation demands drastic and 
 startling changes. The matter of adding sixty-five 
 years to the average life of the race is no small propo- 
 sition, and it is no joke; it is a possibility that should 
 be made a reality, and it is the hope and the expecta- 
 tion of the author of this book that it will help to 
 make this realization matter of immediate concern 
 to all earnest men and women.
 
 PART ONE 
 
 The human body is a wonderful machine. 
 
 If you have driven an automobile, you understand 
 there are certain things you need to do in order to keep 
 out of trouble: you must "feed" the engine properly, 
 keep all the wearing parts tightened and lubricated, 
 and exercise a reasonable amount of care not to over- 
 load your car or subject it to unnecessary strain. In 
 other words, you must use good judgment, supple- 
 mented by knowledge and forethought, or else you will 
 need a mule team occasionally to pull you back to town 
 where some one has brains enough to fix up what your 
 stupidity has put out of "whack." 
 
 Did you ever think of running your body like an 
 automobile ought to be run? Did you ever take just 
 a little time to study and understand the mechanism 
 of the wonderful human body? Do you, right now, 
 understand that it is necessary to run your body prop- 
 erly in order to keep it out of the repair shop the 
 doctor's office? And if you do realize this, do you 
 understand how to do it? If you do, you are lucky. 
 Millions of people do not understand even the first
 
 10 HOW TO LIVE ONE HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 principles of health and hygiene. They violate every 
 law of their physical being every day they live. They 
 go through life, part way through only, full of sick- 
 ness, pain, and disease all the result of their disobe- 
 dience of the very simplest rules that any one may 
 understand who will give the matter as much attention 
 as is needed to understand and run an automobile. 
 
 Proof of broken laws is found in the thou- 
 sands of human "repair shops" that are working over- 
 time, all the time, trying to keep the human machines 
 in motion. In order to understand properly any sub- 
 ject one must begin with fundamental principles. To 
 know how to work the levers and steering apparatus 
 of an automobile isn't all that is necessary, almost 
 any fool can do that, but to know how to keep the 
 levers and steering apparatus working is a "boss of 
 another color" requiring "inside information." 
 
 Even a baby can operate most of the "levers" of 
 the body he can kick and cry and use his hands to 
 grip, and in a few short years is able to run and play 
 and climb a tree, and has quite as much knowledge 
 of his body as his father and mother, which, in the 
 majority of cases, is very little. "Inside information" 
 is generally entirely lacking. 
 
 Speaking of "inside information," this does not 
 refer to "dissecting tables" or a "technical" knowledge 
 of anatomy or the internal structure ; it has reference 
 to a general understanding of the principles involved 
 in the feeding and operating of the human body, the 
 most wonderful machine in all the world. 
 
 If the chauffeur puts water in his gasoline tank, 
 what think you would be the result? If he puts sand
 
 THE BODY AS A MACHINE 11 
 
 in his crank case instead of oil, what effect do you 
 think it would have on the "life" of the machine? 
 You easily appreciate the fact that an automobile 
 needs proper food; that is, you do if you have ever 
 run one. 
 
 Now an automobile, as compared with the human 
 body, is a very simple and imperfect machine. An 
 auto must have gasoline of a certain grade or it won't 
 run at all. The human body needs a certain grade of 
 food, but it is so wonderful that it will run a long time 
 on improper food, with improper care; so wonderful 
 that it can be abused and misused and treated in a most 
 shameful manner, and still live. A fool can run a 
 human body much longer than he can run an auto- 
 mobile but there is a limit. 
 
 Perpetual motion has not yet been discovered. 
 
 Some people treat their bodies as if they thought 
 they were machines built to run forever without any 
 care or attention, but this is a mistake, the worst mis- 
 take that can be made. There is a "jumping off 
 place," and the great majority of people are headed 
 straight for it. 
 
 If the chauffeur hears a "squeak," he stops the 
 engine and investigates. If he is a good chauffeur, 
 he soon finds out what is wrong and rights the wrong. 
 If he is just one of these kind that knows how to "pull 
 the levers," he probably don't hear any "squeak" 
 all sounds are alike to him, and he puts on the "high 
 speed" and soon the "squeak" is lost in the roar of the 
 car as it shoots forward. But that don't cure the 
 "squeak," and twenty miles ahead there is an awful 
 jolt, and a "hurry-up" call is sent in for the ambulance.
 
 12 HOW TO LIVE ONE HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 Many a human chauffeur, when he hears a 
 "squeak," refuses to pay any attention to it, puts on 
 high speed and soon after the undertaker writes it 
 down in a little book, "To funeral expenses of High 
 Speed Jones, Umpty um dollerines." 
 
 One of the first things a good chauffeur does is to 
 learn the sound of his engine, to tell from the "feel" 
 of his car whether it is working right. A good driver 
 immediately fixes everything that is out of "whack." 
 There is one thing sure : an automobile won't fix itself, 
 but it will "fix" any one who refuses to attend to it 
 properly, and fix 'em good and plenty. 
 
 This wonderful human machine, however, is very 
 different from an automobile, for if let alone and the 
 cause of the trouble is removed, it will fix itself. 
 
 But to remove the cause of the trouble here is 
 the rub. 
 
 A machine that is properly constructed is made so 
 that the parts that have the most "wear and tear" are 
 either stronger or else they can be easily replaced. If 
 properly cared for, it never gets out of running order 
 unless it meets with an outside accident. 
 
 It is the desire of automobile designers to construct 
 a machine in accordance with the above theory; they 
 are making good headway, but they never will be able 
 to construct a machine that is "fool-proof." 
 
 Old Mother Nature, however, has actually done 
 what the most skilled mechanics only dream of doing 
 she has built a physical machine that is absolutely 
 perfect in the adjustment of its parts and, like the 
 deacon's old one-horse shay, will run till it all goes 
 to pieces, until every part is worn out ; will run in good
 
 THE BODY AS A MACHINE 13 
 
 condition for at least one hundred years, and then 
 some. 
 
 There are just two ways to die properly either 
 from old age or from being hanged and some of us 
 question the latter. We think, in the first place, that 
 a man should not do anything that would even sug- 
 gest such a punishment, and in the second place, that 
 no matter what a man does, such a punishment is not 
 justified, so this leaves only one way to die properly. 
 
 Strange to say, however, while most people seem 
 to want to live as long as they can, and many are 
 afraid to die, very few go anywhere near the limit of 
 longevity, not one in a thousand passes the one-hun- 
 dred-mile post. 
 
 Why is it that so few people die of old age? 
 
 The answer is twofold: one is that society does 
 not know how properly to take care of its component 
 parts, and the other is that the individuals, the com- 
 ponent parts, do not know how to take care of them- 
 selves. 
 
 A great many people are killed by accidents. 
 
 Where one person kills himself through accident, 
 a thousand people are killed by society ; the toll of the 
 railroads alone amounts to many thousands each year ; 
 the mills and factories kill people like flies, and the 
 mines are veritable morgues. That most accidents are 
 preventable is a plain statement of fact. In nearly 
 every instance the hand of Greed is the cause of the 
 harvest of Death. Just how to take the hand of Greed 
 from the throat of Society is another question not to 
 be discussed in these articles. 
 
 Running, as he does, such a risk of being killed by
 
 14 HOW TO LIVE ONE HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 outside causes; taking his life in his hands, so to 
 speak, every time he steps on board a railroad train 
 or enters a shop or mine or factory, the individual 
 should at least take proper precautions not to lose his 
 life from "inside" causes wholly within the jurisdiction 
 of the individual sphere of action. 
 
 Even though society be a perfect organism, instead 
 of just a beginning, a mere suggestion of what it 
 ought to be ; even though every safeguard against ac- 
 cident be applied, and every workshop made safe and 
 sanitary, this would not necessarily mean that disease, 
 sickness, and pain would be banished from the realm 
 of the individual's internal anatomy. 
 
 The man who blames society for things that are 
 the result of his own ignorance is playing the baby act. 
 Society has enough to answer for without trying to 
 make her responsible for your sins. 
 
 When something goes wrong, it is a common habit 
 to pass the blame along to the "other fellow." A great 
 many "blames" can be placed at the door of society, 
 and that means the other fellow; but a great many 
 more "blames," when it comes to the question of 
 physical health, need not be passed along ; they should 
 properly lodge with the individual who is sick. 
 
 Health is the normal state. If your body is not 
 well, there is some definite reason, some cause for your 
 being diseased out of ease, unwell, and in nine cases 
 out of ten the removal of the cause will effect a cure.
 
 M ACHINE 
 
 CHAPTER I, PART II 
 
 Any machine to run properly must be clean, well 
 oiled, with no parts out of adjustment. Any body 
 to run smoothly, to obey the master mind with preci- 
 sion and despatch, must be likewise clean, well nour- 
 ished and with no parts out of ease, or dis-eased. 
 
 A gasoline engine requires water, lubricating oil, 
 gasoline, and air instead of food; these are vitalized 
 into life by an electric spark. With a proper mixture 
 of air and gasoline, proper lubrication, cooling, and 
 a fat spark, an engine will run smoothly and con- 
 tinuously until the natural and unavoidable wear 
 brings it to old age and decay. Let the lubricating 
 oil give out and the cylinders are soon cut to pieces. 
 Let the water give out and the engine soon becomes 
 overheated. Let the gas or spark give out and the 
 engine must inevitably stop. Feed too much lubricat- 
 ing oil and the engine becomes foul, soot accumulates 
 in the cylinders and soon the spark plugs are covered 
 and the engine misses its strokes and eventually stops. 
 Feed too much or too little air and the engine will 
 run unevenly and without power, if at all. The entire
 
 16 HOW TO LIVE ONE HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 mechanism requires careful adjustment and a proper 
 regulation of its "food" supply ; the result is a smooth, 
 even, and powerful stroke of the piston that sends the 
 wheels revolving with irresistible force. 
 
 The human body should be viewed as a machine, 
 an instrument through which the soul manifests. The 
 soul might be likened to the electric spark from the 
 battery or magnito that supplies the life to the machine 
 and vitalizes it into action. 
 
 Without proper food, clothing, and shelter this hu- 
 man body must get out of ease, or diseased. But food, 
 clothing, and shelter are not all that the body needs ; 
 with all these things it can become diseased through 
 the power of the mind, for it is a more delicate 
 mechanism than the engine of steel, and it is respon- 
 sive to more than mere physical substances. With a 
 perfect adjustment of food, clothing, and shelter, and 
 a wrong mental attitude this wonderful machine -would 
 soon be out of running order. The mind has the pow- 
 er to make the body sick or to keep the body well, for 
 the mind can and must regulate not only the food, 
 clothing, shelter, exercise, etc., but also the thought 
 waves of health, disease, hope, fear, joy, sadness, 
 anger, envy, despondency. All these varied vibrations 
 play upon the sensitive body, quicken its different or- 
 gans to action, cause the blood to rush to the brain, 
 the heart, or the stomach, cause perspiration to come 
 to the surface of the body, the face to flush, the feet 
 to grow cold, or any of the various manifestations 
 that come merely as a response to mental impulses. 
 
 If you can once get the proper viewpoint concern- 
 ing your body, as a delicate mechanism which you are
 
 THE BODY AS A. MACHINE 17 
 
 Outdoor life the hope of health.
 
 18 HOW TO LIVE ONE HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 to run much as a machine, though a mechanism so 
 wonderful that the most complicated machine that 
 man has ever built is but a child's toy in comparison ; 
 that this body of yours must be cared for, fed, 
 clothed, sheltered, and mentally nourished and di- 
 rected along right channels of manifestation ; you will 
 find that if you have not perfect health there is some 
 good reason for its lack. 
 
 In the rules I am going to give you I will present 
 nothing new. For many centuries wise men have 
 regulated their lives thereby, but the masses of the 
 people have been slow to accept, though in recent 
 years great progress is being made along proper lines. 
 
 The average man today uses the body as a means 
 of physical gratification of the appetite and "lusts of 
 the flesh" ; a great feast is his ideal of a "good time," 
 and not a few think they are having a good time when 
 they have paralyzed the brain with intoxicating drink 
 and descended to a plane lower than the beast. All 
 manner of poisons are used to lull the body into a 
 state of partial paralysis tobacco, opium, morphine 
 millions of dollars are spent in their production, and 
 millions of lives are made waste by their use. 
 
 In spite of the fact that we call this a civilized age, 
 it is in reality far from a state of high mental unfold- 
 ment; the race still lives to eat, instead of eating to 
 live. Intellectually the race is but a babe in swaddling 
 clothes, we have much to learn concerning the simplest 
 laws of health. 
 
 Look at the situation: hundreds of thousands of 
 books have been written about diseases and how to 
 cure them ; thousands of colleges and medical schools
 
 THE BODY AS A MACHINE 19 
 
 are busy educating hundreds of thousands of men to 
 cure disease ; there is a drug store on every corner and 
 a doctor's office in every business block, and a gener- 
 ous spattering of them in the residence districts; and 
 still we are a nation of invalids. Nearly every man 
 or woman you meet has an ache or a pain or a cough 
 or a limp or a something-with-a-long-name-to-it the 
 matter with him or her. Death walks boldly through- 
 out the length and breadth of the land, his keen sickle 
 ever red with the life-blood of countless victims vic- 
 tims of ignorance and wrong methods of living. 
 
 A candid observer is forced to conclude that if it is 
 really the business of doctors to cure disease, they are 
 not making much headway ; in fact, they are not keep- 
 ing up with the procession, lame, halt and blind as 
 it is. 
 
 The plain fact is that the doctor's "business" is 
 not to cure disease, but to "doctor" it and the un- 
 avoidable conclusion from this is that if people want 
 to get well and stay well, it is about time they were 
 understanding, not medicine, but the laws of health 
 and hygiene. Once let right living walk in at the 
 front door and the dope bottles will soon be found 
 at the rear on the garbage heap where they belong. 
 
 An ounce of prevention is worth a hundred weight 
 of cure. 
 
 Did you ever stop and think, what would become 
 of the physicians and hospitals and sanitariums and 
 drug stores and undertakers, if an epidemic of health 
 would sweep over this country ? Did you ever stop to 
 think that under the present industrial order it is to the
 
 ?0 HOW TO LIVE ONE HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 immediate financial interest of a great many people 
 that sickness and ill health continue? 
 
 When you have thought this all out it will be a 
 matter of wonder to you, as it is to me, that so many 
 doctors and nurses are actuated by the highest mo- 
 tives. And even when it comes to the venders of pat- 
 ent medicines and drugs, few of them free from the 
 worst of poisons, you must remember that self pres- 
 ervation is the first law of physical life, and that the 
 race is still groping its way towards the light. 
 
 Neither wonder that the true laws of health are 
 not given to the world, only through obscure sources, 
 reaching as yet but a few people, and actually taking 
 effect upon a few of the few that are reached. It is 
 so much easier to follow the crowd, to eat, drink and 
 be merry, and die tomorrow, than to live the life 
 of abstinence, the life of the soul instead of the life 
 of the body. 
 
 Think these matters all over carefully for in what 
 follows I have some simple rules of health for you 
 that if you will observe them, will not only greatly 
 lengthen the years of your physical life, but will make 
 the mind supreme over the body and give the soul an 
 instrument through which it can manifest with power 
 and effect.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 Before continuing this article I wish to again 
 make clear that I shall expound no new theories, 
 neither do I expect or desire that you, dear reader, 
 will consider what I have to say as in any way authori- 
 tative, or to be followed merely because you have seen 
 it here written. 
 
 They say, "What's one man's meat is another 
 man's poison." I believe it to be true. We are un- 
 doubtedly made out of the same kind of soul stuff 
 but in different degrees of development or unfold- 
 ment, and this pertains to the body as well as to the 
 mind and soul. 
 
 The body is nourished by food, the mind by educa- 
 tion, and the soul by aspiration, and these later in 
 turn react upon the body, for, as a temple of the 
 living soul, it is subject to mental and spiritual as 
 as well as physical laws. In the evolution or growth 
 of the mind, the education that is needed at one time 
 is not needed at another. The nursery tales that 
 are used to kindle the imagination of childhood are
 
 22 HOW TO LIVE ONE HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 not the kind of mental pabulum that should nourish 
 the mind in adult manhood. The aspirations of youth 
 are not the outreachings of the full-grown man. 
 The food that is used to nourish the body in its in- 
 fancy is not necessarily the best for after years; we 
 all started out on a milk diet, few would maintain 
 that this is the proper food for the adult. 
 
 Now, let us see if we cannot get at this in an ana- 
 lytical way. Continuing our figure about the engine, 
 the body, or human engine, is fed by three things : air, 
 water, and vegetable growth, the latter term em- 
 bracing fruits, nuts, and all manner of edible plants, 
 cereals, etc. 
 
 By far the most important is air. The body can 
 go for sixty or even ninety days without food, for 
 many days without water, but, in its normal state, it 
 cannot live for five minutes without air. 
 
 The blood is vitalized by passing through the lungs 
 and coming in contact with the air; the more air, the 
 fresher and purer the air, the more vitality. One can- 
 not be healthy unless one breathes deeply, and breathes 
 pure air. To live in small stuffy rooms with closed 
 windows, especially to sleep in such rooms at night, 
 is to commit suicide; the method may be slow but 
 it is a sure one. 
 
 To live in a large city surrounded by smoke and 
 dust, and often the nauseating stench of a "packing 
 house," is to at once begin to weaken the physical 
 body by impoverishing its main food which is pure 
 air. You may not be able to move from the city, 
 you may be compelled to breathe air unfit for the 
 lungs, for you must breathe wherever you are but
 
 AIR THE BREATH OF LIFE 23 
 
 you can, in a measure, make up something of what 
 you have lost by frequent excursions out into the open, 
 the parks, the lake fronts, and the outskirts of the 
 city where the air is pure and where you can fill your 
 lungs, over and over, with new life that will send 
 your blood tingling through your body carrying vi- 
 tality to every organ. 
 
 Even though your environment is not a healthful 
 one you can avoid much that is bad and find much 
 that is good, and, through a knowledge of the laws 
 of health, you can prolong your life many years. 
 
 The first law is deep breathing. To observe this 
 law you must often use the full capacity of your 
 lungs. Ordinarily but a small amount of lung space 
 is used. Some people breathe in little short gasps 
 that never half fill the lungs, in fact, normal breath- 
 ing uses but a part of the lung capacity, the larger 
 that part the better. It is easy to increase the amount 
 of air used if one will give but a little attention to 
 the matter. But in addition to increasing the normal 
 breathing not a single day should pass without bring- 
 ing the full power of the lungs into play. A short 
 brisk run will do this nicely. You can accomplish 
 the same result with a brisk walk, holding your breath 
 as long as you can, and then taking in as much air 
 as you can afterwards. Do this several times until 
 every inch of your lungs is filled with air, and be sure 
 this air is pure; go miles after it if necessary. 
 
 Avoid dusty places, walk on the windward side of 
 the street. Hold your breath when you see a cloud 
 of dust coming your way, in riding this is often de- 
 sirable when passing other vehicles that raise the
 
 24 HOW TO LIVE ONE HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 dust. A little original thought applied to your own 
 environment will help you to get the idea. If you live 
 in a large city you are under some disadvantages, but 
 it is better even to live in a large city and carefully 
 observe known rules of health than to live in the 
 country and violate them. The fact that pure air 
 is all around you is no evidence that you are taking 
 enough into your lungs to properly vitalize your blood. 
 
 The nose is the organ through which air should 
 be taken into the lungs. Nature has graciously ar- 
 ranged so that, in case of emergency, the mouth may 
 also be used, but it is not to be habitually used. If 
 you are breathing through your mouth you are breath- 
 ing wrong quit it. Nature has purposely fitted the 
 nose to receive the air, to filter it, and to protect the 
 lungs as far as possible from impurities, both by its 
 physical construction and its sense of smell. 
 
 One more thing about breathing; the clothing 
 must not in any way interfere with the free expansion 
 of the lungs. Deep breathing is abdominal breathing 
 nothing must restrict the waist. The logic of this 
 is irresistible ; the corset is a curse to the human race, 
 one of the greatest curses of the age. By restricting 
 the normal action of the lungs it strikes a blow at 
 the very heart. It deforms the normal human body 
 and is consequently a blow to art. This is not pre- 
 judice, but every word can be substantiated by positive 
 proof, though this article is not the place to present it. 
 
 Consider this seriously, you positively cannot be 
 healthy unless you breathe properly and copiously; it 
 is the first rule of health the most important the 
 easiest to observe. Cultivate at once the habit of deep
 
 AIR THE BREATH OF LIFE 
 
 25 
 
 breathing and of often filling your lungs to the limit 
 of their capacity. And the beauty of it is that it 
 costs you nothing but effort, the price you must pay 
 for everything worth while. 
 
 No matter what your aim or purpose in life, see 
 to it that you are a strong, healthy, physical animal. 
 The brain is nourished by blood, the blood is vitalized 
 by air. When the body is in normal working order it 
 is the real agent of the mind and all its powers are 
 available for effort in any directed line of activity. 
 You might be sickly, diseased, or an invalid and suc- 
 ceed, but you would succeed in spite of these disabil- 
 ities, not because of them, and no one would be so 
 foolish as to think that they are aids to success. I 
 am sure you will see that it is very desirable to have 
 the body in strong, normal working order, and this 
 is possible only when you breathe properly. 
 
 Life's pathway is strewn with physical wrecks, the victims 
 of bad habits and a bad environment in early life.
 
 eanuness 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 Next to pure air, pure water or water with no 
 harmful ingredients or infusions in it, is important. 
 
 It has been demonstrated that the body can live 
 without injury at least 90 days without solid or liquid 
 food, but it can not live without injury twenty-four 
 hours without water. 
 
 Some people like to disguise their water before 
 drinking it by mixing it with rotten hops and barley, 
 and in other ways too numerous to mention. It is bet- 
 ter to drink lots of water this way than not at all, but 
 for all that it isn't the right way, and the foreign mat- 
 ter in such adulterated water is usually harmful. 
 
 Fact is, you can't improve on Nature; she fur- 
 nishes just the right kind of drink in its natural state, 
 and you should use it that way and use it frequently 
 and liberally and without fear of any harmful conse- 
 quences. 
 
 I am reminded of a life story told me by an invalid. 
 When she was a little girl, she read about some people 
 who were out on the desert and who died from want 
 of water. This story so impressed her child mind that
 
 INSIDE AND OUTSIDE CLEANLINESS 27 
 
 she resolved to try and live on just as little water 
 as she could, so in case of a like emergency she would 
 be prepared to go without it. She constantly denied 
 herself this great essential of physical health, and be- 
 came a chronic invalid. Not infrequently a mistaken 
 idea like that will ruin a human life. 
 
 If you want an absolutely safe rule, here it is: 
 Drink lots of water, and drink nothing else. 
 
 I consider it unnecessary to demonstrate that the 
 drinking of alcoholic beverages is harmful to the hu- 
 man organism. Any drink that has the power to de- 
 throne man's reason and make a maudling idiot or a 
 raving maniac of him, is certainly not a good thing, 
 nor can he indulge in such a drink even "moderately" 
 without moderate injury, in proportion to the indul- 
 gence. 
 
 I once belonged to the temperance crusaders, a 
 bunch of people who were very sincere in trying to 
 cure other people's bad habits, and not conscious that 
 they themselves had habits, almost if not quite as bad, 
 that needed curing. The constant use of tea and cof- 
 fee may be more harmful to the physical organism of 
 the user than an occasional glass of beer or a high- 
 ball. Although such drinks as coffee and tea do not 
 fill one with a desire to go home and beat the brains 
 out of one's children, or commit other acts of violence, 
 nevertheless they have their positively injurious ef- 
 fects on the body and mind. 
 
 You may think coffee is not harmful ; that will be 
 natural to a coffee drinker. You will perhaps say, "1 
 don't feel good without my cup of coffee each morn- 
 ing," neither does the alcohol victim feel good with-
 
 28 HOW TO LIVE ONE HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 out his dram, nor the morphine fiend feel good with- 
 out his "shot," but that's no argument for whisky and 
 morphine nor will it hold for coffee either. 
 
 One never fully appreciates the effect of coffee on 
 the body until one has taken the trouble to eliminate 
 caffein entirely from the system and then makes an 
 experiment. The writer once made this experiment 
 as follows: Years ago my wife had typhoid fever, a 
 very severe case of it that required a constant watch 
 by her bedside. Towards the end of this trying period 
 after I had lost sleep for weeks, in fact had no chance 
 for regular sleep, I found nature would assert herself 
 and close my eyes when I was taking care of the 
 patient. I was in danger of falling asleep at a most 
 critical stage of her sickness. I had heard that coffee 
 would keep people awake, and so I took a cupful one 
 evening. I shall never forget the effect of that cup of 
 coffee; it kept me awake, to be sure, but it made me 
 very sick. I could actually "taste" that coffee out in 
 the ends of my fingers, and feel its effect all over my 
 body. Under my severe physical strain I perhaps felt 
 this more than I would in a normal state, but it was 
 conclusive proof to me that such stuff is not good for 
 the human body. 
 
 (This is no ad for "Boostum." You may be 
 "posted" on this subject; if not, don't try to cure one 
 bad habit by getting into another one. I would not 
 take the position here that these manufactured "ex- 
 cuses" for coffee are as harmful as coffee ; for people 
 strongly addicted to the coffee habit they might be an 
 easy way of getting rid of it. I say "might" ; I don't 
 know; personally, I have no use for them.)
 
 INSIDE AND OUTSIDE CLEANLINESS 29 
 
 There are drinks besides water that are pleasant 
 and helpful, such as are made from pure fruit juices 
 lemonade, orangeade, sweet cider, fresh grape juice, 
 etc., a good plan is to make these yourself. 
 
 A very strengthening and satisfactory drink can 
 be made by simply soaking oatmeal in water. It is 
 good for workmen on hot days, and as we all ought 
 to be workmen, it ought to be good for all of us. 
 
 As for bathing, it is a shame that our present civi- 
 lization, so-called, pays so little attention to this part 
 of social life; I say "social life," for I believe that 
 there will come a time when the great public baths 
 will be a general meeting-place for the people. 
 "Society" gathers now at some seacoast and enjoys the 
 daily plunge and promenade on the beach, but the 
 working people stay at home and swelter through the 
 hot summer days, cooped up in their little box-like 
 homes ( ?) without even the convenience of a bathtub. 
 
 Is it natural for people to swim? Ask the first 
 kid you meet if there is a swimming hole any place 
 about ; if there is one within five miles he will tell you, 
 for he has been there. On investigation you may find 
 the place to be some mud hole, but it beats nothing at 
 all, at least so reasons the kid. I have seen the news- 
 boys jump in the fountain in the public square at 
 Cleveland, Ohio, jump in with their clothes on, and 
 jump out and skedaddle as soon as a copper hove in 
 sight. The normal boy is crazy about swimming, and 
 there should be a good big clean proper safe place for 
 every boy to swim in, and as we are all children grown 
 up, this place should have room for the entire com- 
 munity.
 
 30 HOW TO LIVE ONE HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 Swimming is not only a cleansing process, but a 
 healthful and natural exercise, one of the best, and it's 
 a shame that so many have been and are being denied 
 a chance to enjoy this great sport. 
 
 From the standpoint of cleanliness meat eaters 
 should bathe very often. Vegetarians who live on 
 clean food also need to bathe frequently, but their 
 bodies will not be offensive even if the opportunity 
 for bathing is very limited. 
 
 There is such a thing as taking too many hot-water 
 baths, though few people ever hurt themselves in this 
 way. There are not a few people, however, who "wash 
 the outside of the cup" with great frequency and 
 unction, but who are "full of dead men's bones" in- 
 side and all manner of uncleanness. Personally, I'd 
 rather be dirty outside and clean inside it's more im- 
 portant; but it's better to be clean both inside and 
 outside.
 
 WBBB&z 
 
 Shall we Eat, 
 WHEN Shall weEat? 1 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 From an economic standpoint there is no greater 
 question before the world today than this question 
 of food. 
 
 It is not, however, the purpose of this article to 
 discuss the problem of raising and distributing food 
 so that all people will have a sufficiency, but to discuss 
 the matter from the standpoint of the individual with 
 regard to physical health and longevity. 
 
 On the question of "What shall we eat?" different 
 nationalities would supply different answers, largely 
 governed by climatic and geographical locality. It 
 is manifestly true that the food necessary to sustain 
 physical life in the extreme north could not be the same 
 as that consumed in the tropical regions, even though 
 it were desirable to have it so. It is scientifically 
 demonstrable that the human machine, subject to an 
 extreme temperature of either heat or cold, is mater- 
 ially affected in the region of the fuel storage tank. 
 
 Briefly, the colder the climatic conditions, the more 
 fat or oil is needed to supply heat. It is stated that in 
 the extreme north, common machine oil is consumed 
 with a relish, fat or oil is not only a luxury there, but 
 an absolute necessity. While to eat a tallow candle in 
 the extreme north is to enjoy a treat, to eat one in
 
 32 HOW TO LIVE ONE HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 the extreme south, would certainly be nauseating, and 
 almost an impossible gastronomic feat. 
 
 I do not know whether the experiment has been 
 tried, but in all probabilities the vegetarian, or frui- 
 tarian would find it difficult to survive the rigor of an 
 extremely cold temperature, though the oily nature of 
 nuts might suffice for a time. The argument of our 
 fruit and nut-eating friends in this particular would 
 probably be that for people who live in a climate be- 
 yond the limits of the normal human habitat, an 
 abnormal diet might be excusable. 
 
 Taking a broad survey of the world, it will be 
 found that different people under different circum- 
 stances consume as food a great variety of things, 
 ranging from bugs, snakes, and bird's nests, through 
 the animal kingdom, not excluding human flesh, to 
 vegetables, fruits and nuts. Getting at the original 
 source of things some people actually eat dirt. 
 
 That the necessity of eating has, in many instances, 
 forced both individuals and entire races to adopt cer- 
 tain things for food, that are not really desirable as 
 food, will be accepted by students of economics with- 
 out argument. That appetite may be cultivated for 
 undesirable things misnamed food, is also a truism. 
 
 That the question "What shall we eat?" up to the 
 present time, has been largely superceded by the ques- 
 tion "What can we get to eat?'' seems equally true to 
 the author. If true, it goes to show that habits of 
 eating have been acquired by other than natural long- 
 ings of the normal appetite, and this thought carried 
 to a logical conclusion will easily account for the many
 
 WHAT, HOW, AND WHEN TO EAT 33 
 
 abnormal habits and appetites that are the heritage 
 of the average mortal today. 
 
 Having acquired wrong habits, through necessity, 
 these habits, like all habits, have become more or less 
 fixed, after the necessity has gone the habits have 
 remained. To those who understand how very many 
 things we think and do, just because of custom and 
 inherited environment, it will not be difficult to under- 
 stand that very little actual attention has been given 
 to properly answering this very important question 
 "What shall we eat?" Most people eat what their 
 parents have taught them to eat, or what their environ- 
 ment permits them to eat. Some people even try to 
 make a social distinction between themselves and what 
 they are pleased to term "the common herd" by what 
 they eat. History has recorded banquets where hum- 
 ming bird wings have been served, and all manner of 
 peculiar foods have been manufactured from Nature's 
 store house by skilled cooks and caterers. 
 
 Both poverty and riches have served to give a 
 wrong answer to this question "What shall we eat ?" 
 the one compelling people to eat what is not proper 
 for food, and the other impelling people to eat what 
 is equally improper. 
 
 The true answer, may I make bold to suggest, must 
 come from an actual knowledge of the kind of food 
 best adapted to build up and sustain the life energy 
 and physical requirements of the human body con- 
 sidered, not as a medium for the gratification of appe- 
 tite, but as a machine, to be kept in good running 
 order. 
 
 That this answer will be gained through actual ex-
 
 34 HOW TO LIVE ONE HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 periment, not theorizing, is a sensible view of the mat- 
 ter and that these experiments must be largely per- 
 sonal, and can be conducted by any individual suf- 
 ficiently interested, is unquestionably so. 
 
 While the combined results of numerous individ- 
 ual experiments is desirable, to form a general conclu- 
 sion, yet this proposition may be stated with scientific 
 certainty every human body is governed by certain 
 fixed laws that are always operative in a like manner 
 under like circumstances. To explain 'two persons 
 may be very differently affected by taking the same 
 substance into the human organism. Supposing this 
 substance to be morphine, one may be killed instantly, 
 while another may seem even to be temporarily bene- 
 fitted. The difference is not in organic structure, but 
 merely in an acquired habit or a developed appetite. 
 By gradually taking poison, one may prepare one's 
 system for larger and yet larger quantities, until one 
 can eat with seeming immunity, enough poison to kill 
 a dozen people. But everyone can become accustomed 
 to eating even poison and live for a while, at least. 
 
 The above is not a proof that poison is a good thing 
 to eat it is merely a proof that old Nature fights a 
 mighty battle to sustain the life of the physical body 
 against the ignorance and abnormal appetites of its 
 inhabitant. For all that, the fight is bound to be a 
 losing one in the end, no one can take poison and not 
 sooner or later suffer the inevitable consequences of 
 disobedience to natural laws. 
 
 You may, perhaps, be shocked to know that most 
 people are eating more or less poison all the time. 
 In other words, they are taking into their physical or-
 
 WHAT, HOW, AND WHEN TO EAT 35 
 
 Eats so much it makes him poor to carry it around.
 
 36 HOW TO LIVE ONE HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 ganism either as food, or else for the gratification of 
 acquired appetite, certain substances that not only do 
 not build up the tissue or supply life energy, but act- 
 ually tear down and destroy, and prepare the body 
 for premature death and decay. 
 
 Granted, that a normal appetite will select food 
 that is perfectly adapted to sustain the animal orga- 
 nism, we, as so called civilized people have long since 
 passed the point where our appetites can be said to 
 be natural or normal and we must solve this prob- 
 lem of "What shall we eat?" if we want to solve it 
 with a view to perpetuating the life of the physical 
 body for the longest possible time, on the basis of analy- 
 sis and experiment, and with a view to cultivating a 
 normal appetite, regardless of the cravings and long- 
 ings of our present abnormal appetites, the results 
 of long years of acquired habits, mostly bad. 
 
 To claim, now, that because you like a thing it is 
 good for you to eat it, would be to discard reason and 
 acknowledge yourself the slave of appetite alone. 
 Whether it is good or not good for you, depends not 
 on your liking, but on the actual effect upon your 
 physical organism with reference to sustaining its 
 energy and longevity. 
 
 The whiskey toper likes his dram; the drug fiend 
 likes his poison ; the opium smoker likes his pipe ; and 
 these likes may be no different from your likes except 
 in degree of injury resulting from their gratification. 
 
 The answer to this question "What shall we eat?" 
 is really very brief, and some may think that the 
 writer is joking when he gives it, but I assure you that 
 it is no joking matter. The answer is "FOOD".
 
 WHAT, HOW, AND WHEN TO EAT 37 
 
 The fact is, that a great many things are eaten 
 and drank, swallowed, guzzled and bolted, that are 
 not food and all that is not food is really poison, and, 
 strange though it may appear on the mere statement, 
 food itself may be poison if not properly eaten, or if 
 eaten in improper quantities. 
 
 Food is required by the human organism to supply 
 energy and perpetuate its life. There is no really 
 pure food known in nature. In other words there is 
 always a portion of what is taken in the system as 
 food that has to be discarded as waste, matter that 
 cannot be assimilated. 
 
 Food can properly be classed under good food, 
 poor food, bad food, and poison, this classification also 
 includes drinks. 
 
 The food that can be most easily assimilated, and 
 will supply the most energy without injury to the 
 organism, thus perpetuating its longevity, is the best 
 food. Food from which the life-giving elements may 
 be easily separated and the refuse easily eliminated 
 from the system is good food. 
 
 Food that contains little life-giving force and much 
 refuse and is not easily assimilated or expurged is 
 poor food. Matter that contains no life-giving energy 
 and elements that are harmful, is poison. 
 
 To answer this question "What shall we eat?" I 
 say, considering climatic and other conditions normal, 
 a simple fruit and vegetable diet with milk or pure 
 water. 
 
 Any pandering to the appetite means suicide long- 
 drawn out, and often most excruciatingly painful. 
 A healthy, normal appetite will enjoy normal food,
 
 38 
 
 the very greatest enjoyment so results, but when one 
 feeds one's appetite without care or regard to the 
 actual requirements of the body, simply lives to eat, 
 instead of eating to live, such a one is not going to 
 live nearly as long as he ought to live ; nor is he going 
 to enjoy the time he does live nearly so well as the 
 one who has learned the lesson that the body is like a 
 machine, to be supplied with the things it really needs, 
 and not to be insulted by stuffing into it a lot of things 
 that it does not need, and that are a positive burden 
 and injury to its normal manifestation. 
 
 And now I hear many of you who have just read 
 the foregoing ask "Why don't you tell us just what to 
 eat?" 
 
 I have! I'll repeat it: 
 
 Eat sparingly of raw fruits and nuts, natural sweets, 
 such as honey, etc., drink milk, slowly, and you will 
 have supplied your physical organism with the very 
 best food, from which it can subtract the most vital 
 energy with the least amount of energy expended in 
 eliminating the waste. 
 
 And now that I have answered this question, to 
 my own satisfaction, at least, and after I have given 
 several years to experimenting, I will not ask you to 
 accept this answer, only in the good faith that it is 
 given you. There is nothing like a personal demon- 
 stration, I am confident that if you make this personal 
 demonstration, and make it with a sincere desire to 
 adjust your physical body to the laws of its being, 
 willing to eliminate all that pertains to acquired ap- 
 petite, and to live normally, (and if you continue the 
 experiment long enough to allow your organism to
 
 WHAT, HOW, AND WHEN TO EAT 39 
 
 adjust itself to your new mode of living, not less 
 than a month, at least,) you will find that my answer 
 is rational, sensible, and conclusive and you will also 
 find that your new mode of living will give you more 
 life, at a cheaper cost than the old. Your longing for 
 the flesh pots will gradually be replaced by a sense 
 of gratification that you are living in a clean, strong, 
 vigorous body, free from aches and pains and disease. 
 Though it may take you much longer than a month 
 to demonstrate all this, the demonstration is possible. 
 Nature is wonderfully kind and even after years and 
 years of abuse and wrong life she will partly make 
 right old wrongs and repair injuries. 
 
 If you are not willing to live right you do not de- 
 serve to feel right nor will you ever free yourself 
 from disease until you learn the lesson that old mother 
 nature has for so many centuries been trying to teach 
 you and your forebears, who have largely made you 
 what you are. 
 
 As to the question/'How shall we eat ?" the answer 
 is brief. Eat slowly, masticating well before swallow- 
 ing, also drink slowly, especially milk, mixing same 
 with saliva. 
 
 As to "When shall we eat?" here is the rub. 
 
 Cultivated habit answers, "Whenever one has a 
 chance." This spells gluttony. No matter how good 
 the food you eat, too much of it is bad. Once the 
 body is supplied with the nourishment it requires, all 
 else that you add is simply waste and waste that 
 must be eliminated by using the vital energy that 
 should be used for other purposes. 
 
 Very briefly and shockingly stated, many people
 
 40 HOW TO LIVE ONE HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 are simply walking garbage cans. They keep their hides 
 so stuffed with food that the better part of the energy 
 of the body is consumed in eliminating the surplus. 
 Every organ is loaded with effete matter to the point 
 of breaking down, and disease is the logical and inev- 
 itable result they simply dig their graves with their 
 teeth. 
 
 Too much good food is far worse than a reason- 
 able amount of bad food. The system is able to take 
 care of considerable waste effectively, but no body can 
 be used as a continual dumping ground for food, be it 
 good, bad or indifferent, and not be injured thereby. 
 
 Most people eat too much. It is very easy to ac- 
 quire the habit of over-eating. It is not easy to cor- 
 rect this habit, for a diseased appetite craves food all 
 the time, this craving is itself an evidence of its dis- 
 eased condition. And often from the superabundance 
 of the food put in the stomach the body is actually 
 starved for lack of proper nourishment. That old 
 saying, often jokingly applied to some person, that 
 "he eats so much that it makes him poor to carry it 
 around," is often a fact. Every dyspeptic is a proof 
 that it is not what the body takes in that helps it, 
 but what it is able to assimilate into life energy. 
 
 Every particle of food taken into the system that 
 is not assimilated, allowing a reasonable amount for 
 normal waste, is a clog and detriment to the body, a 
 cause of weakness, disease, premature old age and 
 death. Most of you will be much surprised when you 
 actually learn, by demonstration if you will, how very 
 little good food is needed to supply your body with 
 an abundance of life force and physical energy.
 
 WHAT, HOW, AND WHEN TO EAT 41 
 
 I recently made a lecture date in an automobile. 
 The road was heavy after a hard rain, and in addition 
 we encountered about two miles of fresh gravel. 
 After making the trip of over twenty miles, and back, 
 thinking that the hard roads had consumed consider- 
 able gasoline, I opened the tank to add five more gal- 
 lons I found, however, that not much over three gal- 
 lons had been consumed. Three gallons of liquid to 
 push a car weighing twenty-six hundred pounds, and 
 with an additional load of four grown people, through 
 the mud and wet sand and new gravel over forty 
 miles of road. This is what a machine of man's con- 
 struction can do, a machine that is not nearly so won- 
 derful as the machine that you and I are driving every 
 day, our bodies that are much better adapted than a 
 gas engine, to manufacture vital energy from their 
 food supply. 
 
 For most people two meals a day light ones of 
 fruit, nuts, and milk are enough. A great many can 
 live even better on one meal, and a very light lunch 
 at supper time. 
 
 The man who works at hard physical labor may 
 need more ; it all depends on the amount of energy ex- 
 pended, how much must be replaced. But it is safe 
 to say that nine people out of ten overeat all the time, 
 and the tenth one part of the time. 
 
 It is no easy thing to conquer the abnormal appetite 
 that is the heritage of the ages of wrong living, return 
 to nature's food, which is raw, and learn to live 
 right. But it is very much worth while, for it means 
 abundant life and health, clear mental vision, and a 
 sense of cleanliness and at-one-ness with old Mother
 
 42 HOW TO LIVE ONE HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 Nature that can only come to those who are willing to 
 "live the life." 
 
 And now in conclusion, ask the toper to give up 
 his dram. He has a thousand excuses and reasons 
 why he should not comply; his case, as he sees him- 
 self, is invariably an exception to the rule, and he 
 really prefers to keep right on tippling. I am not 
 asking you to give up a single meal or a mouthful. 
 When the conviction comes to you that you should 
 do this and live for the sake of expressing your life 
 in the terms of mental aspiration and moral as well 
 as physical growth and unfoldment ; then you will seek 
 to know the laws of your physical being and obey. 
 Until that time remember this: never were truer 
 words spoken or written <"Be not deceived, God is 
 not mocked, for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall 
 he also reap". 
 
 A FRANK ADMISSION 
 
 And right here I am willing to confess that I am 
 perhaps what might be called an extremist, and that 
 an exclusive diet of raw food, or even vegetarian, is 
 not absolutely necessary to health. I have found it 
 works fine in my own case, and feel sure that most 
 people who are willing to make the personal demon- 
 stration will find that after a month's trial they are able 
 to live nicely on such food, and enjoy it. At first, I 
 seemed to have very little to eat, that is, little variety 
 to choose from. But I have come to see that with 
 fruits and nuts and good milk, honey, etc., I have a 
 great plenty, and that one does not need to eat very 
 many things to satisfy one's hunger and one's physical
 
 WHAT, HOW, AND WHEN TO EAT 43 
 
 needs. I do not eat many vegetables ; tomatoes, celery, 
 etc., taste good to me, and I find I have cultivated an 
 appetite for raw carrots that I believe are very good 
 food. I tried fresh sweetcorn, and must confess that 
 I like it cooked on the cob better than raw, though 
 my normal appetite may some day return in full, and 
 I may find that I can eat raw corn with relish I can't 
 do it now. 
 
 I do know that many foods are better raw than 
 cooked, but there are other foods that may be improved 
 with cooking. These foods, in my judgment, are not so 
 good as those that are best raw, and that is why I 
 am selecting these raw foods, and I feel well satisfied 
 with the selection. Though this experiment with me 
 at this writing has only covered about six months, it 
 has enabled me to add twelve pounds to my weight 
 over any point I have previously reached, for many 
 years back. My muscles are firm and I feel full of 
 vital force and in perfect health, and that is the way 
 I want to feel. 
 
 Occasionally I am out on a lecture trip, or am in- 
 vited out to dine. Then I go back to my ordinary vege- 
 tarian cooked diet. (I never eat meat, no matter where 
 I am.) I find, however, that I can note the effect of 
 even one ordinary meal, that I feel sluggish and well 
 it does not agree with me as does my raw food and I 
 am glad to get back to my peaches and cream and 
 honey. The fact is, I can't think of anything that 
 sounds better than peaches and cream and honey, or 
 that tastes better either. 
 
 And it's so simple to prepare, and so cleanly. I 
 get my own meals, and when I'm through I wrap the
 
 44 
 
 HOW TO LIVE ONE HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 waste up in a paper, and there is just a knife, fork, 
 and spoon, one dish and a glass to wash, and they are 
 not greasy or dirty in the ordinary sense ; a little cold 
 water rinses them off quickly. How nicely does this 
 fit in with the ideal of Robert Blatchford, the great 
 English writer "opulence of mind and frugality of 
 body".
 
 Fashion 
 In League 
 
 Wiih ' 
 Deaib and 
 Hell- - 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 Next to food, clothing is of importance, or at 
 least so considered by civilized races. 
 
 That this idea of clothing has been carried to an 
 extreme can not be questioned by serious-minded peo- 
 ple in fact, it has been carried to an absurdity. 
 
 The savage wears a stick in his nose (and you may 
 notice I said his deliberately) or a feather in his hair ; 
 other things are considered secondary in importance, 
 if worn at all. The first idea of clothing was un- 
 doubtedly for ornament, and the idea has been a sticker 
 for even unto this day the main idea of clothing cen- 
 ters around this word "ornament," though goodness 
 knows that some of the duds people wear are far from 
 ornamental. 
 
 As the necessity for enlarged territory urged the 
 people from the warmer regions, the idea of clothing 
 as protection obtained, but the idea of ornament also 
 remained, and today the two are practically insepa- 
 rable. Inasmuch, however, as ornament is not neces- 
 sary to the life of the body, and protection in the se- 
 vere climates is essential, logically, protection is of 
 more importance.
 
 46 HOW TO LIVE ONE HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 In clothing the body the first thing to be con- 
 sidered is that every limb and muscle be left to act 
 freely and without restraint. The next thing of im- 
 portance is, that the clothing be evenly distributed, 
 not thick in one place and thin in another. The nearest 
 approach to the natural covering of the skin itself is 
 logically the sensible idea of the matter, and in accord 
 with nature's plan. It is likewise desirable that the 
 covering be as light as possible, just adding to nature 
 enough to counterbalance the climatic needs. Having 
 complied with the above requirements the matter of 
 beauty or ornament may be properly considered and 
 not before. 
 
 And another matter must also be considered, cloth- 
 ing must be ventilated to be healthful. The body needs 
 air, and the more of it that is exposed and hardened 
 to the elements the better, in spite of the dictates of 
 Fashion and modern customs to the contrary. 
 
 Now let me ask you, dear reader, if the clothing 
 you and your fellows wear will pass the test ? 
 
 Has the clothing of the human race, up to this 
 time, been constructed with a definite purpose of aid- 
 ing nature by added protection to perpetuate the life 
 of the body ? Or has it simply come from an elabora- 
 tion of the idea of ornamentation? No doubt, sheer 
 necessity has required covering of some kind, 
 whether ornamental or not, but the simple answer is 
 that very little attention has been given to construct- 
 ing garments that are properly adapted to protect the 
 body, and still allow it perfect freedom. 
 
 One thing that today mitigates against this more 
 than any other is the dictates of Fashion, whose other
 
 CLOTHING AND FASHION 
 
 47 
 
 name is Mammon, for the real purpose of the con- 
 stantly changing styles is grossly commercial, though 
 few of the walking clothes-racks know it. 
 
 Fashion does not change the styles in accordance 
 with any rational law of adaptation of beauty. Her
 
 48 HOW TO LIVE ONE HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 creations are more often hideous and harmful than 
 they are beautiful and comfortable. 
 
 Just how this old hag, Fashion, has held her sway 
 over the world for so long a period is a story for the 
 psychologist to tell, and in the telling will be unravelled 
 the cunning designs of Greed, in partnership with 
 Death. 
 
 Had this she-wolf, Fashion, been content with 
 merely changing the garb that mortals wear, our cen- 
 sure would not be so severe, but she has had the audac- 
 ity to attempt to change the physical form that the 
 Great Creator himself has designed. 
 
 Not contented with putting the human foot in a 
 tightly enclosed and unventilated leather box, she has 
 insisted that the foot should be made to conform to the 
 box, and not the box to the fo t. And still not con- 
 tent she has made the body conform to the box, by 
 placing from a half to two inches under the heel of 
 the foot, and thus throwing the entire body out of 
 poise and necessitating that every muscle be strained 
 to readapt itself to the unnatural position. 
 
 Not content with torturing the poor feet of her 
 modern devotees, she has gripped the very vitals of 
 the mothers of the race and condemned her victims to 
 lives of barrenness, pain, and disease. To know the 
 enormity of this crime, it has been estimated that over 
 $300,000,000 are spent annually for corsets, and this 
 is but the beginning of the expenditure that results in 
 untold misery to the living, and an outrage to the un- 
 born who must enter this life handicapped at the out- 
 set, with a weakened, if not a deformed, physical or- 
 ganism.
 
 CLOTHING AND FASHION 49 
 
 The power of this she-devil, Fashion, can not be 
 underestimated. She rules supreme ; from the highest 
 to the lowest we all bow before her blood-stained 
 throne, though some of us unwillingly. Let one of us 
 dare to disobey her slightest command, and the rest 
 of us at once make life so miserable for the daring one 
 that he or she is soon forced back into line. And just 
 why we do this is another story for the psychologists 
 to unravel. 
 
 Do you doubt it? If you are a man (I often write 
 the word with a feeling that it does not yet apply 
 properly to any of us), just let your hair grow beyond 
 the usual "fashionable" length for men, and see what 
 will happen. I will guarantee that some one will soon 
 notice it and volunteer to loan you a quarter to have it 
 trimmed. This will be done at first in a joking way; 
 but should you persist, your friends will take the mat- 
 ter seriously, and you will shortly be accosted with the 
 remark, "For goodness' sakes, Jones, why don't you 
 get your hair cut?" If you still have courage, the 
 boys will follow you around and "kid" you openly on 
 the streets ; and finally, if you refuse to come under, 
 the police will take to keeping an eye on you and 
 eventually you may land in the "bug house." 
 
 Is it anybody's business how you wear your hair? 
 Are you hurting anybody by wearing it long? Is it 
 hurting you ? Shouldn't you be permitted to wear your 
 hair as you please,? But are you? 
 
 Suppose your aching feet cry out for freedom, 
 and you think of the time when you were a boy, and 
 how when the warm spring sun commenced to melt 
 the snow you counted the days that would elapse be-
 
 50 HOW TO LIVE ONE HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 fore you could go barefooted. And, oh, the joy of it, 
 to unlimber the toes and feel the earth beneath your 
 feet? And you think it over you will at once con- 
 clude, no matter how much you wish to do so, that 
 it won't do for you to go barefooted. You perhaps 
 don't know just why you reach that conclusion, this 
 old she-devil, Fashion, however, is at the back of it. 
 But you decide at least to compromise with yourself, 
 and you buy a pair of sandals. You may be "permit- 
 ted" to wear them around the house without serious 
 consequences, but dare to be caught out on the public 
 highway with them on and you will soon be whipped 
 back into line, and conclude that it is easier to suffer 
 the pains of corns and bunions than to run the gaunt- 
 let of ridicule. 
 
 Just wear a long-tailed coat when a short-tailed 
 coat is "proper," and you will "get yours," full meas- 
 ure, packed down and running over. 
 
 And, Mr. "He-animal," will you kindly note that 
 most of the above remarks apply to your sex, for you 
 are as much in the net of this demon of Fashion as 
 are the so-called weaker sex, though perhaps you do 
 not go to quite the extremes they do in showing it? 
 Aside from the corset and the extreme high heels, the 
 female attire is not so very much worse than the male. 
 It's a hot day, thermometer hovering around one hun- 
 dred degrees in the sun. I look out of my cell window 
 (no, I'm not in jail, just confined to an office), and 
 see a lot of women daintily dressed in white gauzy 
 material, light of weight and suggesting some evidence 
 of their actually being "rational," in spite of their 
 poor deformed feet and "hobbling" walk, and their
 
 CLOTHING AND FASHION 51 
 
 stiff, unbending, ungraceful, pinched, and tortured 
 waists. I see a lot of men dressed largely in dark 
 material, nearly every one of them wearing a coat and 
 most of them a vest, all topped off with a heavy "sky- 
 piece" that is surrounded by a leather band and abso- 
 lutely shuts off all ventilation from the top of the 
 head 'which may be the cause for the hot air that so 
 frequently gets inside this peculiar enlargement on the 
 top end of our spinal columns. 
 
 I guess the average woman, in spite of her frills 
 and folderals, is about as comfortable as the average 
 man, for she generally takes it pretty easy around the 
 house in her loose flowing kimono and sloppy slippers. 
 
 But the fact is, that we are neither one of us really 
 comfortable or well dressed, in spite of the pride we 
 take in some of our duds. And the further fact is that 
 as long as the race is ruled by commercialism, we will 
 all of us conform more or less strictly to the dictates 
 of this old hag, Fashion, and our poor bodies will suf- 
 fer in the degree that we obey. 
 
 To be truly free, to live as we please, to dress as we 
 please, to eat as we please, and to please to live and 
 dress and eat in harmony with the fundamental laws 
 of our physical being, this is but the dream of an 
 extremist today, but the possibility of its realization 
 is coming tomorrow that is, the writer hopes it will. 
 
 In the meantime please reread the fundamental 
 principles governing the proper clothing of the body, 
 as herebefore stated, and try to comply with them to 
 the best of your knowledge, and your moral and men- 
 tal courage, for they have to do with the lengthening 
 of your years.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 Primitive man was a nest-builder. 
 
 For many centuries the human family lived in the 
 treetops, making therein their nests, much like the 
 birds. The treetop home was not one of choice so 
 much as necessity, for primitive man was without 
 tools or weapons, and a legitimate prey of all the beasts 
 of the field. Even in their treetop homes they were 
 not safe from the huge reptiles that were so feared 
 that unto this day the race shudders at the sight of a 
 harmless garter snake. 
 
 Did you ever dream that you were falling, falling? 
 Ask the psychology man; he can explain to you how 
 this dream conies from the distant past when your 
 forebears lived in the treetops and actually took .1 
 tumble out of them occasionally. It was probably not 
 until man discovered and tamed the fire that he dared 
 to crawl down from his treetop home and live on the 
 ground, in some sheltering cave or excavation of his 
 own construction. 
 
 One of the sights that interests the northern visitor 
 to the south is an occasional stone fireplace and chim- 
 ney that stands out in the open without any house 
 around it, the wooden structure having burned away. 
 It may not be a fact, but I surmise that they frequently
 
 A MANSION OR A HOVEL 53 
 
 rebuild a house around a good chimney of this kind; 
 if so, they are simply following out the plans of the 
 first architects, for the home, as we think of it today, 
 was builded around the hearth. 
 
 With the development of the tools the homes de- 
 veloped, though it took many, many centuries for us to 
 learn how to make a house that is really adapted to the 
 physical life and comfort of the human animal. The 
 fact is, that we have yet to learn a few important 
 things, and to apply the many things we do know so 
 that universal benefit will result. 
 
 Strange to say, with all our knowledge as to how 
 to construct most wonderful buildings of stone, brick, 
 cement, and wood, structures that rear their spires and 
 turrets almost into the clouds, yet a great many people 
 still live in shacks, and square wooden boxes with 
 windows in them, that are little better than the early 
 structures of the savages ; and many thousands live in 
 congested slum districts of the cities, in places that are 
 foul and unsanitary and far worse than the treetop 
 nests of our primitive ancestors. 
 
 There were undoubtedly serious objections to these 
 treetop homes, and no one would advocate a return to 
 this mode of living ; yet with all these objections they 
 were well ventilated, and that is more than can be said 
 of many of our dwelling-places today. One thing is 
 certain, every savage had some kind of a home, some 
 kind of a nest or cave or hollow tree that was his, or 
 that was tribal property and that meant the same 
 thing. After many, many thousands of years of so- 
 called "civilization" we have finally reached a stage 
 where a majority of the race have no homes of their
 
 54 HOW TO LIVE ONE HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 own, and must pay tribute to those who own many 
 homes in order to have a chance to live inside pro- 
 tecting walls. 
 
 It isn't because we, as a race, do not know how to 
 build homes, beautiful homes, homes fitted with every 
 convenience and adapted to shelter and prolong human 
 life, that so many people are "homeless." Neither is it 
 because these people are not industrious that they are 
 homeless, for it is the vast working class, the real use- 
 ful toilers of the world, who are the homeless ones to- 
 day but this is another question for the political 
 economist to answer. It is my purpose here to state 
 just what are the requirements of a shelter adapted 
 to human habitation under modern conditions. 
 
 The first essential is thorough ventilation. This 
 question of air is more important than most people 
 understand it to be. A loosely constructed "shack" 
 out in the woods is a far more healthful abiding-place 
 than a closely walled-in mansion in the heart of the 
 dusty, stench-reeking city, no matter how modern its 
 structure or how beautiful and comfortable its equip- 
 ment. With plenty of fresh air, especially at night, the 
 body will gather in much strength and put up a vigor- 
 ous resistance to any germ intruder that comes along. 
 
 The human animal needs sunshine just as much as 
 a plant. 
 
 And right here is an idea I want to impress upon 
 you very strongly : no structure can be built that is a 
 proper habitation for man all the time. He must get 
 out in the open, out where there is green grass and 
 trees and flowers and water and nature. If he per- 
 sists in shutting himself up inside, no matter how nice
 
 A MANSION OR A HOVEL 55 
 
 his quarters, old Mother Nature will resent his slight- 
 ing her in this way and soon send a messenger for him. 
 no other than the Grim Reaper himself. 
 
 Herein has modern civilization reached a dangerous 
 stage. It has compelled millions of men and women 
 to spend their lives inside the various buildings it has 
 constructed, its mills and factories and workshops and 
 stores and offices and warehouses. It has even sen- 
 tenced hundreds of thousands to live beneath the 
 earth in its mines. Were these work-places carefully 
 built with an idea of furnishing the maximum of air, 
 and amid natural surroundings, it would not be so bad ; 
 but constructed as they are, jammed up one against 
 another, with millions of feet of space where the sun- 
 light can never enter, they are nothing but germ- 
 infested death traps. 
 
 I say it deliberately: no one can live in a modern 
 city of any size, with its indoor life, its stench, its 
 gassy, smoky air, and live anywhere near his normal 
 years; it is simply slow suicide, and not so slow at 
 that. 
 
 We are paying an awful price for this so-called 
 civilization of ours, a price in human life that is not 
 to be reckoned from the long lists of murders, acci- 
 dents, and victims of war and disaster, so much as 
 from the shortening of the normal years that we all 
 ought to live. 
 
 You can't possibly live and work in stuffy, re- 
 stricted quarters and have an abundance of life and 
 vital force. You can not occupy a little "two by twice'' 
 office in a modern skyscraper or a beautiful mansion 
 near a city and escape the penalty of the law of nature,
 
 56 HOW TO LIVE ONE HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 for around you is the seething city air, full of dust and 
 smoke and foul odors and death. 
 
 The sooner you, as an individual, learn that the 
 normal, rational place for man to live is out in the open 
 air, and that if compelled to work inside, his inside 
 surroundings should be as much open to the air and 
 "outside" as they can be, and that the proper way to 
 sleep is with your head outdoors, in an outdoor bed- 
 room (or this impossible, with windows wide open 
 alway), the sooner you will commence to store extra 
 vitality for the days when you have past the zenith of 
 your physical career and started on the downward 
 decline. 
 
 While it is important that a home should have 
 conveniences, a modern system of lighting, heating, 
 hot and cold water, bath, etc., it is far more important 
 that it should have lots of pure air all the time, and 
 that every room should have sunlight. There should 
 be no dark closets or halls. The ideal house of the 
 future will be made of glass, or largely of glass, and 
 so that every room can be frequently washed from 
 cellar to garret, not only the floors, but the walls and 
 ceilings as well. 
 
 In this matter of house-building we have certainly 
 been doing a lot of experimenting, from the birds' 
 nests and caves of primitive man, the skin tents of the 
 Indians, the snow houses of the Esquimaux, the adobe 
 houses of the Mexicans, the stone structures of the 
 ancients, to the steel-frame, fireproof buildings of to- 
 day, but we have still got another guess coming. From 
 the standpoint of health the modern city is "impos- 
 sible" and some day people will think more of keep-
 
 A MANSION OR A HOVEL 57 
 
 ing their body in a healthy state and prolonging its 
 life than they will of making money. 
 
 Another thing : the people who are now forced by 
 economic necessity to work long hours in crowded, 
 poorly ventilated, unsanitary shops and factories are 
 commencing to understand that these conditions are 
 not necessary, and that they can, by cooperative action, 
 be changed, and they are not going to stand for this 
 program much longer. The right to "life, liberty, and 
 the pursuit of happiness" has not been safeguarded by 
 modern commercialism, which has failed to construct 
 either sanitary shops or homes for the workers, and 
 even the master class must suffer from the general 
 contagion and contamination, though they are able to 
 escape much of it by taking to their summer resorts 
 and woodland retreats. 
 
 It is not the masters about whom the writer is con- 
 cerned, but the great masses of the common people who 
 are not really living, but are existing under an environ- 
 ment that can yet be called "hostile," an environment 
 that fails to shelter them properly, and at the same 
 time provide the necessary fresh air, without which the 
 human organism can not live its normal lifetime. 
 
 Between a mansion in the heart of the city's stench 
 and a shack in the woods, the preference is in favor of 
 the shack but there should be no necessity of a choice 
 between either of them. The race will yet solve the 
 problem of living a normal human life without 
 reverting to savagery, but it can not solve this problem 
 by forming congested groups, such as our modern 
 cities, neither is the isolated rural dwelling the solution. 
 
 Thank goodness, there is still plenty of outside
 
 58 
 
 HOW TO LIVE ONE HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 room, and when we get really sensible, we will quit 
 crowding and smothering the life out of each other. 
 
 In the meantime, spend as much time outdoors as 
 you possibly can, and spend it where there are flow- 
 ers and birds and trees and fresh air, fresh with the 
 scent of the roses or the new-mown hay or the verdant 
 foliage ; or in the winter spend it in the; snowdrifts, if 
 necessary; but spend it outside some place, though it 
 be in your own back yard or on a tenement roof. 
 
 It is about time the human race crawled out of their 
 holes into the sunlight.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 There is, perhaps, nothing that has been carried to 
 a greater extreme of tomfoolery than this question of 
 how to keep the muscles of the body active and alive. 
 
 The caged animal solves this problem by walking 
 back and forth in his cage. Possibly if he had dumb- 
 bells he would use them, or he might be induced to 
 work some kind of "apparatus," but even if he could 
 be trained to do this, I doubt very much whether his 
 problem would be solved better than he attempts to 
 solve it by his restless walking. 
 
 No better exercise has been invented than walking, 
 unless it is running. The "physical strainer" who 
 spends his time in some stuffy room going through a 
 lot of fool contortions, when he might take a brisk 
 hour's walk out in the open air, may succeed in raising 
 "bumps of muscles" on his carcass, but this does not 
 necessarily mean that he has increased his vitality or 
 lengthened his life. 
 
 Here is the idea : one thing that is abnormal can not 
 be corrected by adding another abnormal and unnat- 
 ural thing to it.
 
 60 HOW TO LIVE ONE HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 The people who live an indoor, inactive life, that 
 so many live; the office workers (who frequently work 
 the other workers), and the ladies and gents who don't 
 need to work at all, may hope to escape the penalty of 
 their inactivity along productive lines by resorting to 
 "artificial" work. They may take the "absent work" 
 treatment; that is, they may bend their weak backs 
 and grasp an imaginary weight and lift it above their 
 heads, but it isn't half the real exercise that a ditch- 
 digger gets by actually throwing a shovelful of dirt 
 up on the bank ; neither is it as dignified, for the ditch- 
 digger is doing something useful while this "absent 
 worker" is simply trying to fool himself, and succeed- 
 ing admirably. 
 
 There is nothing like the real thing. No man or 
 woman who is not physically injured and thus incapa- 
 citated, should go through life without actually doing 
 useful physical labor. I do not mean by this that 
 every man should be a ditch-digger; in fact, I do not 
 believe in any man doing this kind of labor, that can 
 be performed by machinery better. I have no objec- 
 tion at all to a machine taking the place of a man; 
 what I'm kicking about is this idea of a man making 
 a machine of himself. 
 
 Some day a lot of people are going to wake up and 
 realize that this idea of forcing part of the people to 
 do all the useful productive labor, while another part 
 does no labor at all, has resulted in great injury to 
 both. The manual laborers being forced to do much 
 more than their rightful share, and much more than 
 they ought to do, drain their vitality and shorten their 
 lives, while the so-called "brain workers" by doing no
 
 WORK VS. ATHLETICS 61 
 
 work, suffer from the lack of healthful physical ex- 
 ercise. 
 
 Every man and woman should be both a brain 
 worker and a manual worker, and until a system of 
 industry is worked out that combines the two, and 
 this is altogether possible, we will have overworked 
 and underworked human beings ; and the underworked 
 will probably continue to devise ways and means of 
 getting their normal exercise in more or less abnormal 
 fashions. 
 
 Under present conditions I shall not blame any one 
 for not wanting to go down in the ditch, so to speak. 
 Say what we wish about the "horny-handed sons of 
 toil," we all know that this is but political buncombe, 
 and that the man who does useful hard manual labor 
 today is looked down upon by the brain workers, as 
 they in turn are scorned by the few who have succeeded 
 in getting out of all work and are living on the backs 
 of the many (in blissful ignorance of the fact that old 
 Mother Nature is not going to permit that sort of 
 thing to go on indefinitely, and sometime they are go- 
 ing to get an awful bump). 
 
 If you really are a "brain worker," don't continue 
 to work your alleged brain for "exercise," by lifting 
 tons of imaginary nothing. If you want to lift, go 
 right out in the open air some place and lift something 
 real; there is many a tired, fagged-out working man 
 who would be pleased to have you "spell" him for a 
 time it woudn't take you long to get all you want of 
 it. But if you refuse to do this, and you are convinced 
 that you need exercise, then get it in some sensible 
 fashion.
 
 62 HOW TO LIVE ONE HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 As before stated, walking is one of the very best 
 forms of physical exercise. Don't drag along one foot 
 after another, but strike a good brisk pace, breathing 
 copiously, and hike for the country as fast as your legs 
 will carry you. 
 
 At least once a day your entire system should be 
 vitalized by some exercise that will send the blood 
 tingling through your veins, and a little vigorous "run 
 on the bank" sand bank will accomplish this trick 
 in fine order, and won't cost you a cent for "apparatus" 
 either. 
 
 Outdoor games are good; but here, again, don't 
 take the "absent" treatment. I never could understand 
 how people get so much joy out of seeing the "other 
 fellow" play a game, the fan is a joke to me. If 
 there is anything "doing," I want to be one of the 
 doers, not sit around like a hump on a log and yell my 
 fool head off watching the "other fellow" have a good 
 time out on the diamond that is, I suppose they have 
 a good time, though I surmise that this all play and no 
 work is as bad for "Jack" as the idea of all work and 
 no play. You can't commercialize sport without tak- 
 ing the sport out of it. 
 
 This is just another evidence of the absurdity of 
 our present way of doing things. Some fellows 
 get all of the play in such large "chunks" that it makes 
 "work" out of it, while the rest of us don't get a 
 chance to bat a ball, or play tennis, or play at all, we 
 just sit around and watch, and sometimes even pay 
 good money to do that. 
 
 I'd like to see the "professional sport" driven out 
 of business, and a new era inaugurated where all the
 
 WORK VS. ATHLETICS 63 
 
 people would have a chance to play healthful outdoor 
 games. Every city, town, and school district should 
 have its public playgrounds, and every citizen should 
 be something of an amateur athlete at putting the shot, 
 jumping, running, ball playing, or something. These 
 playgrounds should be either grass covered, sprinkled 
 or oiled, so no player would breathe dust, the great 
 destroyer of human life. 
 
 Between honest, hard, manual labor, under right 
 conditions, and walking, running, and healthful out- 
 door sports the body can get plenty of normal exercise 
 without apparatus of any kind, and without studying 
 out some new kind of "motion" to keep your liver 
 working. Just be natural in your exercise and you 
 will make no mistake, though special exercises may be 
 devised for special cases of disease, and are here 
 proper and far better than "medicine." 
 
 Much of what passes for physical training is sim- 
 ply physical straining; it is the using up of surplus 
 vitality that should be used in old age. It's all right 
 to be strong, but there is such a thing as being too 
 strong ; any good healthy billy goat is a proof of that, 
 and the early demise of many of our professional 
 athletes is another proof. 
 
 The muscles should be soft, flexible, and evenly 
 developed ; hard, "bunchy" muscles are not desirable, 
 and herein is the danger in the usual methods of spe- 
 cial training. Walking is a perfect exercise. Horse- 
 back riding is fine for the horse, gives him just the 
 exercise he needs and is also good for the man, but 
 not so good as walking, but it beats staying inside and 
 punching a bag or pulling an "imaginary" row-boat
 
 64 HOW TO LIVE ONE HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 across an "imaginary" lake; even automobiling beats 
 that, especially so if you are the driver and can suc- 
 ceed in occasionally bursting a tire. There are some 
 kinds of "blow-outs" that are not altogether pleasant 
 but they are very good for weak backs. 
 
 In conclusion, take this as good advice: get out in 
 the open air as much as you possibly can and walk 
 several miles every day, not forgetting to breathe 
 copiously, and you will never feel the need of "appa- 
 ratus" or special instructions about bobbing up and 
 down or wiggling sidewise or anything of that sort. 
 Or play games, for it is natural for men to play 
 games; if you don't think so, watch the monkejs, 
 and this isn't intended as a reflection on your ancestors. 
 If men came from monkeys (which I do not believe), 
 they have come a long ways from them, and it 
 wouldn't hurt them much to retrace some of their 
 steps. I consider that the poor monkey is very often 
 abused by this common insinuation ; it is not fair, and 
 I hereby cast my hat in the ring as the monkeys' 
 champion. Until men live as naturally as monkeys 
 do, they have no right to boast of any superiority, and 
 until they straighten out their economic relations and 
 divide the work so that each will do some healthful 
 manual labor, human beings have some things yet to 
 learn from their little brothers who live in the woods, 
 and who never dream of monopolizing the cocoanut 
 crop or building fences around nature's food supply.
 
 rw^ i A inv/i i 
 
 Iramecl Animals 
 or the 
 
 ww ^i 
 
 Human ohow 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 If we will give a very little careful thought to the 
 subject, we will soon see that most everything we do 
 is more or less a matter of habit. Any one can eat 
 in the dark, with a sharp knife at that and never cut 
 his mouth. For some years we have cultivated this 
 habit of finding our mouth ; it is one of the very first 
 we acquire, but it is "acquired." I have watched with 
 amusement a baby trying to find his own mouth, his 
 mouth, at first, is better at finding things than his 
 hands. 
 
 Children often learn to suck their thumb. I have 
 a sister who held on to this habit for years, in fact 
 after she was married she could occasionally be caught 
 sucking her thumb silly, wasn't it! 
 
 You have heard of people biting their finger nails, 
 or pulling out their hair, or some other foolish thing, 
 and you have said, "Why don't they stop it?" But if 
 I should suggest something that you have been doing, 
 or you should turn the tables on me and tell me of 
 some peculiar habit of mine, we would both find that 
 it isn't so easy to stop a habit as one might suppose. 
 
 Many habits are harmless; they simply open one
 
 66 HOW TO LIVE ONE HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 to ridicule, or make one an object of pity, or furnish 
 a topic for discusison between people who never rise 
 to the point of talking about anything really worth 
 while. I suppose one could suck one's thumb, occa- 
 sionally, until one was gray-headed, and still have a 
 perfectly good thumb, and be a good sucker and I 
 don't know as it is any person's particular business 
 but the party affected or effected. 
 
 There are some habits, however, that are positively 
 injurious, and the sooner we discover these and eradi- 
 cate them the better it will be for ourselves and the 
 race. 
 
 I could mention a number of bad habits that would 
 be admitted as bad by most of my readers without 
 any argument being necessary: say drinking intoxi- 
 cating liquors, or smoking opium you would say, "Of 
 course they are bad!" These, probably, are not your 
 bad habits; you see them in the "other fellow," and 
 you are very frank in your analysis of the other 
 fellow's bad habits. 
 
 But suppose I tell you that eating, as commonly 
 indulged in, is a bad habit, you would exclaim, "Pre- 
 posterous, unthinkable, ridiculous!" And you would 
 at once start in to tell me about the Dutchman who had 
 the horse that he was training to live without hay or 
 oats, and just before he got him completely trained 
 the horse up and died, and then you would laugh, 
 Ha, Ha! just like that, and feel immensely pleased. 
 
 You, perhaps, did not notice that I said "as com- 
 monly indulged in," and if you will read it again, it 
 won't sound quite so bad. But we will come to this 
 later.
 
 GOOD AND BAD HABITS 67 
 
 As for drinking, we will also come to that later on, 
 though I wish to quote here an eminent English phy- 
 sician on this subject (you will note I occasionally 
 quote physicians if they are in line with my own 
 views, otherwise never I am just like other people in 
 such matters, excepting that I am willing to admit it). 
 Dr. Johnson says : "I have come to the conclusion that 
 more than half of the disease that embitters the middle 
 and later part of life is due to avoidable errors in 
 diet; and more disease is brought on by erroneous 
 habits of eating than from habitual use of alcoholic 
 drink." (Quoted from Milwaukee Health Depart- 
 ment Bulletin, a very interesting and helpful little 
 publication sent free to all Milwaukee citizens who 
 ask for it great idea, that!) 
 
 Now let us take up one of these "habits" that is 
 common, and much defended the smoking habit. It 
 has been stated that the discoverers of America took 
 the report back to the fatherland that they found na- 
 tives who were "smoking like devils." The fact is, 
 that most of the adopted Americans very soon acquired 
 the habit and have also been "smoking like devils" 
 ever since. 
 
 That this is an acquired habit no one will deny. 
 That nature rebels at the point of acquisition, all who 
 have gone through the ordeal will admit. There is a 
 time after the boy smokes his first cigar that he feels 
 very much discouraged, like "throwing up" every- 
 thing, so to speak. But he knows that Pa and Uncle 
 George both persisted and learned how, and so he 
 heroically sticks to his job, acquires the habit, and 
 lives to tell about it, jokingly. And then, when he
 
 68 HOW TO LIVE ONE HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 grows up and has a little boy of his own, he licks him 
 soundly for doing the same thing he did when a boy. 
 
 Did you ever see a smoker who would not tell you 
 that he could "smoke or let it alone, just as he 
 pleased"? And this is so, perhaps, for he generally 
 "pleases to smoke," and seldom "pleases to let it 
 alone." And it is really so, in a deeper sense, in that 
 the soul of man can do whatever it starts out to do, 
 given time enough to accomplish the task. But, oh, 
 what a task it is for a person who has fully acquired 
 the nicotine habit, either smoking, chewing, dipping, or 
 snuffing. To unfasten its grip from their body re- 
 quires a degree of grit and determination that few 
 slaves of the nicotine habit possess. Any victim of 
 the tobacco habit who does not believe in hell can 
 very soon convince himself that there is such a place, 
 and the location of it will be' very close by; all he has 
 to do is to stop his habit and that's much easier said 
 than done. 
 
 "But why stop it?" the nicotine slave remarks, 
 "it is a great pleasure to me; it soothes my tired 
 nerves; it makes the hard places soft, and helps to 
 make life worth living. Why stop it? Besides, it 
 don't hurt me in the least. Of course, I know what 
 'tobacco heart' is, and how old Bill Jones died of a 
 smokers' cancer and all that, but I am moderate. 
 Why, just look at Farmer Brown; he has smoked all 
 his life, and he is hale and hearty at eighty years old ; 
 and there is Peterson and Jacobs and Ostrander, they 
 all smoke and chew and drink, and yet they are alive 
 and seemingly healthy, and well along in years." 
 
 Sounds reasonable, doesn't it?
 
 GOOD AND BAD HABITS 
 
 69 
 
 Death lurks in every glass.
 
 70 HOW TO LIVE ONE HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 But for all that, here is the explanation and the 
 warning : 
 
 The human system is built on the "surplus energy" 
 plan. For instance, the lungs have many cubic inches 
 of capacity that are not used on ordinary occasions. 
 Sad to say, some people never use their full lung 
 capacity, and this means that the normal lungs are 
 weakened by non-use. You are not supposed, how- 
 ever, to use your full capacity in ordinary breathing; 
 the surplus is for an emergency, when, for instance, 
 you have to run for your life. Now the savages had 
 to make this "run for life" quite frequently, and 
 there is no evidence that they were ever bothered by 
 the white plague; in fact, all the "plagues" in those 
 days were black. Civilized man has protected himself 
 to some extent on this "running" business; one's life 
 these days is comparatively safe from physical as- 
 sault unless one has to make a short sprint occasionally 
 to avoid a passing automobile. The human race today 
 is not a "running race" ; man seldom runs ; in spite 
 of the idea that we are hitting a pretty high pace, 
 we are walking through it all the time. 
 
 Every organ has a surplus power, a reserve 
 force. The strength of the average man, when 
 taxed to its utmost, is really marvelous. Perhaps you 
 have heard of the wonderful stunts a man will do in 
 cases of excitement, say a fire, when he will lift 
 and move things that he otherwise couldn't budge. 
 The strength of a crazy person is phenomenal ; it is 
 concentrated energy, because the mind of a crazy per- 
 son is fixed on just the one thing he is doing, and he 
 can muster all his power at that point.
 
 GOOD AND BAD HABITS 71 
 
 Now this is what I'm driving at: I want you to 
 know that you have "surplus energy" that is not used 
 on ordinary occasions ; it is really "stored energy" that 
 carries you forward after you have crossed the me- 
 ridian of life and have struck the down grade. 
 
 Up to a certain time the body continually stores 
 this surplus energy; for a considerable period it holds 
 its own, and then comes the autumn days when the 
 surplus should be gradually used up in a ripe old age. 
 
 Every wrong habit, every broken law of nature, 
 every excess, extracts its tribute from the surplus 
 vitality. 
 
 In the case of a normal manifestation, such as a 
 run, the surplus energy is not depleted ; while the full 
 capacity of the body is brought into play, it gains 
 strength by this full use. A good brisk run, with 
 copious breathing through the nose, is far better to 
 tone up the system and send the blood tingling with 
 new life through every part of the body, than all the 
 medicine in Christendom. 
 
 But there are many "runs" that are made on the 
 system that simply enter into the reserve storehouse 
 and sap the surplus strength without giving anything 
 in return. 
 
 Oh, no, Mr. Smoker, you don't feel the drain! 
 The surplus supplies it readily. But for all that you 
 are using up your old age and burning your candle 
 at both ends. 
 
 You may say it does not harm you to smoke or 
 drink or take morphine or dope coffee, but be not 
 deceived "whatsoever you sow, that shall you also 
 reap." The law is inexorable, the penalty is not to be
 
 72 HOW TO LIVE ONE HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 escaped, and the Grim Reaper will mow you down 
 many years before your allotted time. No matter how 
 many doctors you call in to try and cheat old Mother 
 Nature, they can fool no one but themselves, and 
 you and the undertaker is certain of his job, and the 
 coffin trust has the last whack at you. 
 
 It's very easy to blow a few dozen years of your 
 life into soothing rings of tobacco smoke, but is it 
 really a sensible thing to do? And this is but one of 
 the many habits that tend to shorten life by using the 
 surplus energy and by incapacitating the body to store 
 energy. 
 
 It's not an easy thing to break a habit, but it's a 
 mighty easy thing for a habit to "break" you, both 
 financially, which is comparatively unimportant, and 
 physically, which is of great importance and some day 
 will be so considered. 
 
 Among smokers there is a general feeling of "I 
 don't care" in regard to this entire matter. Though 
 some men knew that every puff of their cigar would 
 take a day from their lives, they would puff on com- 
 placently and say, "What of it ? life is of small conse- 
 quence anyway!" And they would not understand 
 that this very nicotine habit that deadens their nerve 
 sensation would dictate this answer. 
 
 The normal man holds to life tenaciously. When 
 the body is in a healthy state, the mind is apt to be 
 healthy, and to view the world as full of latent possi- 
 bilities and unexplored resources. Health and Hope 
 walk hand in hand. 
 
 The ethical mind sees in life a vast opportunity 
 for unfoldment and character-building. It views life
 
 GOOD AND BAD HABITS 73 
 
 as an intellectual battlefield, and bravely faces up 
 stream and against the tide. 
 
 Habits are good and bad, the good ones are the 
 result of earnest striving towards the light, the ever 
 outreaching of the soul for knowledge, and the appli- 
 cation of this knowledge to life itself. Bad habits are 
 the result of inactivity, the acceptance of things as 
 they are, without question ; the result of conformity to 
 environment, instead of struggle against it, for all en- 
 vironment is in a degree "hostile," and no soul that 
 goes down stream is making real progress. 
 
 To know a thing is wrong and to continue doing 
 it is to acknowledge you are licked without even a 
 fight 
 
 To continue doing a thing just because you are in 
 the "habit of it" is to refuse to make progress, to drift 
 with the tide, though the word might well be spelled 
 "tied," for one held in the clutches of a bad habit is 
 truly tied, bound, and often gagged. 
 
 The best proof that one is in the clutches of habit 
 is the fight one will put up in its defense. It is right 
 at this point that the same fight put up against the 
 habit would conquer it. Later the victim of habit 
 gradually understands its debilitating and damning 
 influence and power over him, but then the habit has 
 sunk its fangs into his very vitals and almost a super- 
 human effort is needed to shake it off, but the victory 
 is worth the effort. 
 
 From the broader viewpoint life is not a narrow 
 span between the cradle and the grave; it reaches 
 out into a vast eternity of possibilities, and would 
 you limp through future centuries of manifestation,
 
 74 HOW TO LIVE ONE HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 bound and gagged and helpless because in the grip 
 of habit, or will you rise and fight a good fight and 
 become the master of yourself? 
 
 From the narrow viewpoint, all there is to life is 
 its present manifestation: today we eat, drink, and 
 make merry; tomorrow we die. Yet even from this 
 narrow point of vision the one who has the most abun- 
 dant life lives most, and one can not have abundant 
 life without health, and one can not have health and 
 be the slave of bad habits. 
 
 Even though there are no open doors to the tomb 
 and the soul sleeps through eternity in its "windowless 
 palace of rest," yet is it worth while to live right, in 
 accordance with nature's laws, that one may have the 
 fullest expression in the physical realm of which the 
 body is capable. From the physical standpoint there is 
 no joy that can equal the normal, healthful expression 
 of the physical organism along right lines. 
 
 A bad habit is as a fence that shuts one out of the 
 really good things, though it is admitted that it is 
 hard for the soul in the grip of a habit to comprehend 
 this viewpoint. 
 
 A bad habit is as a weight that holds one down to 
 a lower plane of expression, and trends ever to drag 
 one still further down. 
 
 Bad habits are hard to cure in proportion to their 
 long continuance, and the weakness of the character of 
 their possessor. 
 
 Many bad habits are acquired because of lack of 
 understanding and without any knowledge of their 
 baneful influence. With many people when knowledge 
 comes in at the front door, the bad habit is imme-
 
 GOOD AND BAD HABITS 75 
 
 diately kicked out at the back. Many bad habits of 
 eating, breathing, etc., may well be classed here. We 
 have had very little chance to learn how to live right ; 
 the "doctors" have been so busy "doctoring" that they 
 haven't had time to tell us how to keep well, nor could 
 they reasonably be expected to do so, and we haven't 
 taken the trouble to find out these things for ourselves, 
 which is the sensible thing to do. 
 
 Many bad habits are wilfully acquired, and wilfully 
 retained, even after full knowledge of their "badness" 
 is present. In such cases the problem is not an easy 
 one for an outsider to solve; in fact, the individual 
 himself must ever be the arbiter of his own fate. 
 
 Habits are not to be cured in a day, even when 
 one earnestly desires to be cured, for a cure can not 
 be said to be effected until every vestige of "desire" 
 has been conquered, and that's no easy matter. 
 
 Here is the psychology of it. Do not wait till the 
 desire is on, until every nerve and fiber of your being 
 seems to be demanding the particular indulgence that 
 you are striving to overcome. Commence at once to 
 fill your mind with "counter suggestions." Fill it with 
 firm resolves backed up by good arguments and solid 
 facts why you will no longer continue to be a slave. 
 Fill it full of loathing for this habit. And when the 
 habit tries to storm the citadel of your soul, fight from 
 the very start by refusing to think about it. Fill your 
 mind with SOMETHING ELSE. Do something, play 
 a fiddle, dance a jig, sing a song, or get out in the open 
 and run, run like the very devil himself is after you 
 (and this is the "realest" devil you'll ever meet), and 
 keep running till you have conquered.
 
 76 
 
 HOW TO LIVE ONE HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 The foregoing seems simple, but it is the key to 
 the lock that chains you to a bad habit, for "as a man 
 thinketh, so is he," and you are only bound to physical 
 habits because you are mentally bound. Refuse men- 
 tally to entertain a bad habit and you become the mas- 
 ter of it. Many people in the grip of some bad habit 
 lose courage and cease to fight ; they feel that it is not 
 possible for them to conquer it. This is a serious mis- 
 take. There is no stage where all hope is forever lost. 
 The quickened soul can rise triumphant over every ob- 
 stacle that impedes its pathway. With some who still 
 have strength of character the battle may be easily 
 won, with others it may take weeks and months and 
 years, but with every effort made towards a given 
 goal one makes progress, just in proportion to the 
 effort expended.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 To say that there is no use for medicine would 
 probably be making an extreme statement that will not 
 be seriously considered for perhaps another century. 
 To say that the habitual use of medicine is very harm- 
 ful to the physical organism, and that most medicines 
 are without any real "curative" properties, is to state 
 the truth whether acceptable or not to the "doctors" 
 or the "patients." 
 
 The absurdity to which this matter of medicine has 
 come may be surmised when one goes into a modern 
 well-equipped drug store and notes the thousands of 
 bottles of extracts, lotions, and poisons that are used 
 in- the "mixing" of the concoctions that are put to- 
 gether "by order of the physician." 
 
 The man or woman whose hope of health lies in 
 this direction is headed straight for the grave. 
 
 External applications in case of wounds or sores 
 may at times be desirable. If I ran an old nail in my 
 foot, I would wash the wound with some kind of anti- 
 septic, turpentine is mighty good for such purposes, 
 and the nail hole should be enlarged or opened so 
 that the bruised flesh will be bathed. A poultice made 
 of a scraped raw potato, or piece of fat pork, should
 
 78 HOW TO LIVE ONE HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 afterwards be applied. One of the. best poultices for 
 a thing of this kind is a fresh "cud" of chewing to- 
 bacco it's about the only thing that the stuff is really 
 good for. An injury of this kind should be watched 
 very carefully, and if it does not heal readily and 
 there is any indication that it is getting worse, a good 
 physician should be consulted and the wound cauter- 
 ized and properly attended to. 
 
 It is not, however, necessary to run for a rag every 
 time one cuts one's finger with a penknife. The 
 writer worked for years as a lather, and during that 
 time very frequently cut and pounded his hands and 
 fingers with a hatchet; they are covered today with 
 scars, real badges of labor. I soon learned that the 
 best treatment for these small wounds was to wash 
 them out in clean water and then let them alone. 
 Nature soon covers the wound with a clot of blood 
 and starts the healing process. 
 
 In case of broken limbs or serious injury, the sur- 
 geon should be at once consulted, and in the mean- 
 time bandages should be applied that will stop, as much 
 as possible, the flow of blood to the injured part, 
 clothing loosened, and the patient made comfortable, 
 mentally and physically. It is not in cases of accident 
 where the body is apt to be injured by treatment, in- 
 asmuch as this treatment is of an exterior nature. It 
 is when the "doping" process starts that the danger 
 starts, and it continues as long as the "doping" is 
 kept up. 
 
 Very briefly and distinctly stated, the writer does 
 not believe in the "curative properties" of "medicine." 
 The evidence that it does not cure is found in every
 
 MEDICINE, ITS USE AND ABUSE 
 
 79 
 
 In nine cases of sickness out of ten a short fast will put 
 you on your feet.
 
 80 HOW TO LIVE ONE HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 graveyard, and in the multitude of sick people that are 
 continually under the doctors' care. 
 
 I do not even believe that medicine often assists 
 in making cures, unless it is in such cases as the 
 patient has "faith" in it, and hence it acts as a cura- 
 tive "suggestion." 
 
 In this last statement I do not wish to be misunder- 
 stood. I do not believe in "faith cure," nor "mind 
 cure," except for such diseases as are purely mental, 
 and there are many such ; neither am I a so-called 
 "Christian Scientist." In the cure of any disease, or 
 the recovery from any accident, however, the mind is 
 a very important factor, and mental suggestion from 
 a doctor or "healer" or friend, and auto-suggestion 
 from the patient, must now be reckoned with as one 
 of the most powerful assistants to nature in the heal- 
 ing process. 
 
 There may be some simple, harmless extracts from 
 roots and herbs that have a helpful effect in restoring 
 the sick or diseased body to its normal condition of 
 health ; I would not say that there are none such, tut 
 it is questionable, in my mind, if they are of any con- 
 siderable importance. 
 
 Now, note carefully the position here taken! 
 
 Health is the normal condition of the human or- 
 ganism. 
 
 When the body is not in perfect health, there is 
 some cause for the ill health. 
 
 You can not restore your body to perfect health 
 without first removing the cause of its ill health. 
 
 By removing the cause of its ill health, if this cause 
 has not been too long standing, nature will at once
 
 MEDICINE. ITS USE AND ABUSE 81 
 
 commence to restore the body to its normal condition 
 of health. 
 
 If the cause has been too long standing and the 
 resulting injury too serious, all the physicians in 
 Christendom can not make good what nature can not 
 make good ; they may kill pain by laudanum or opium 
 or morphine, but they can not cure, nor does their 
 "doctoring" assist nature to cure, nor will it prolong 
 the life of the patient, but rather help to hasten the 
 visit of the undertaker. 
 
 The real physician will locate the cause of ill 
 health and, if possible, remove it, or teach the patient 
 how to remove it, and after it is removed, how to live 
 so as to avoid a repetition of the same condition. 
 
 Years ago, visiting a friend in Ohio, I saw his 
 cow carrying a bone in her mouth. It was to me a 
 very unusual and comical sight and I asked him for 
 the explanation. He said : "The soil here is lacking in 
 certain bone-making properties that the cow instinct- 
 ively knows or feels she needs, and she recognizes 
 these properties in the bone that she has found." In 
 other words, the cow was not getting just the kind of 
 food that answered her physical requirements. 
 
 I anticipate that the time will come when physi- 
 cians, real ones, will be able to analyze the exact phys- 
 ical requirements of building up strong bodies, or re- 
 pairing weak ones, and instead of writing out a long 
 list of Latin names of drugs, powders, and lotions for 
 the patient to swallow in capsules and "doses," they 
 will say: "What you need is to eat a little less starchy 
 food and more muscle food; try eating raw carrots 
 (or something) for a week." In other words, they
 
 82 
 
 HOW TO LIVE ONE HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 will prescribe the medicine, if we can call it such, in 
 its natural stage in the food itself. 
 
 This is not a common, but a rational idea of medi- 
 cine, and the day will come when it will be seriously 
 considered by the teachers whose business it will be to 
 keep the people well. In the meantime you consider 
 this seriously right now. 
 
 May we all get just what's coming to us!
 
 -... ; .-.-. ,.-$m 
 _row cX 
 
 Hair On/ 
 
 AGGDSO 
 
 E 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 The spectacle of a bald-headed man buying a "hair 
 restorer" from a bald-headed druggist is one of the 
 sights that must make the gods laugh and all the little 
 fishes in the sea wiggle their tails in ecstacy, but for 
 all that, it is a thing that often actually happens. 
 
 We have become so accustomed to doing foolish 
 things that we do them without any appreciation of 
 the absurdity of the matter, though in reality it is not 
 so very much more absurd to buy "hair restorer" from 
 a bald-headed druggist than from a "hairy" one you 
 will get stung in the same place under either circum- 
 stance. 
 
 The fact is, the only way to buy hair is to buy a 
 wig or a switch it doesn't come put up in bottles. 
 And right here I might remark in passing, that the 
 men haven't much on the women who buy their hair 
 in visible chunks and wads, while the men purchase
 
 84 HOW TO LIVE ONE HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 only a "hope" and it's just as "false" as any rat or 
 switch manufactured. 
 
 Of course, there is some good that may come from 
 the use of a hair restorer ; it takes some "rubbing" to 
 apply it, and the "rubbing" is all right. 
 
 Now let's apply a little ordinary "hoss sense" to 
 this question. 
 
 Men have bald heads, women don't. What's the 
 answer ? 
 
 Man's hair is short and woman's long. It is not 
 found, however, that cutting the hair tends to destroy 
 it, but rather the reverse. It is not, then, that the hair 
 of man is short that his head eventually becomes bald, 
 nor is it as many would like us to believe, because 
 man works his brain unduly. The fact is that we 
 haven't worked our brains enough or we would have 
 solved this problem sooner and saved our hair. 
 
 Here is the solution in a nutshell. The fact that 
 woman's hair is long requires considerable combing, 
 and the length and weight of the hair itself means con- 
 siderable pulling; this tends to agitate the scalp and 
 feed the hair with blood. A man's hair being short 
 needs little attention, and unless he is a married man 
 it seldom gets pulled, and it is not long enough to 
 "pull itself," so the scalp is not agitated and naturally 
 gets thinner until it can't support a good crop of hair. 
 
 A bald skull has a thin skin stretched over it like 
 a drum head ; the thinness of the scalp is the cause of 
 the loss of the hair; you can rub "ointments" and 
 "hair food" and all manner of dopes and washes on 
 such a scalp and not help a bit, except the good that 
 comes from the rubbing.
 
 CARE OF THE HAIR 85 
 
 The way to get rid of a bald head is to either cut 
 it off, or cover it carefully with glue and paste a wig 
 on it. I know this is not encouraging news to my 
 bald-headed readers, but I'm not getting paid for 
 telling them an untruth, nor because I know I can't 
 raise false hair on their heads, will I raise any false 
 hope in their bosoms. 
 
 The following remarks apply chiefly to those who 
 still have their hair and who don't want to get bald 
 headed. The only hope is that you at once start in to 
 giving your scalp vigorous massage treatments and 
 pull it frequently, eliminating every loose hair you can. 
 Don't worry about the hairs you can pull out, new ones 
 will grow in their place, but if you let them fall out 
 of their own accord, your name is "baldy," whether 
 you like it or not. 
 
 Get a couple of good stiff hairbrushes and give 
 your head a very strenuous rubbing until the scalp 
 fairly burns and is red with the new blood that is 
 called up by the extra friction. This massage will 
 thicken the scalp and the blood will feed the hair ; but 
 you can't feed what "isn't," and a bald head is past 
 the feeding stage, unless there might be some live 
 hair roots that could be coaxed back. 
 
 Another thing of importance : women seldom wear 
 hats, and when they do, they are of some light material 
 that is thoroughly ventilated. As a mere man, it has 
 always been a mystery to me how these "flimsy" af- 
 fairs could cost so much money, but aside from that, 
 their flimsiness is a big point in their favor. Men's 
 hats are, as a. rule, stiff and without ventilation, and 
 injurious to the hair, especially so in warm weather.
 
 86 HOW TO LIVE ONE HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 We do not wear hats so much for protection as 
 because of habit. 
 
 A man will wear his hat out in the evening just 
 the same as during the heat of the day. Now there 
 isn't much danger of being sunstruck in the evening; 
 the hat is useless then, if not most of the time. At 
 any rate, if you want to save your hair, wear a light, 
 well-ventilated hat, and that as seldom as possible. 
 
 While it is true we seldom see bald-headed women, 
 a good many of them are traveling the right road 
 these days, and if you could see them minus their 
 "bought locks," you'd say I am hitting it pretty close. 
 
 A fine head of hair is one of woman's crowning 
 glories that is, if it is natural. But this thing of 
 putting up a bluff that you have such hair is deliberate 
 falsehood and, mark it well, every daughter of Eve 
 will pay the penalty for this deception sooner or later. 
 Besides this, it is robbery ; it robs the woman who has 
 a fine head of hair, largely the result of care, from 
 her deserved distinction. 
 
 These unnatural additions to the natural hair are 
 not conducive to a proper growth, and the more arti- 
 ficial hair is worn, the more it will have to be worn, 
 for the natural hair continues to grow beautifully 
 less and less, because the owner pays more attention 
 to combing her switches. Admitted that the deception 
 will pass muster on us poor bald-headed men, for all 
 that it is deception and leaves its scar in the character, 
 and nature will some day even the score some way or 
 other, take that for granted. 
 
 As for hair dyes, hair oils, and such steer clear 
 of them !
 
 CARE OF THE HAIR 87 
 
 I know of an old woman who has been trying for 
 years to fool people with regard to her age by dye- 
 ing her gray hair brown. She hasn't succeeded in 
 really fooling anybody but herself, and has forfeited 
 the right to grow old gracefully. Gray hair is often 
 beautiful, and is always appropriate for old people. 
 The most of us grow gray long before we ought. 
 
 I also know a young woman who had nice light- 
 brown hair, but she was not a decided blonde, so she 
 "decided" the matter for herself and dyed her hair. 
 She perhaps did this in a moment of thoughtlessness, 
 for since then she has thought some and "decided" 
 that nature's light-brown hair is far more becoming 
 to her than the manufactured blond variety, and now 
 she is patiently waiting for the new brown hair to 
 push the dyed blond ends out to the jumping-off place. 
 It doesn't cost much to turn your hair to peroxide 
 blond, but it takes a lot of courage to decide to go 
 back to nature's own color and advertise to the world 
 what a ninny you once was, but even at that it is 
 better than continuing to be a ninny. 
 
 I have known bachelors who dyed their moustache 
 a nice shining black, but they usually either did not 
 get clear down to the skin, or else they got some of 
 it on their skin, and the result was not pleasing, and 
 every one knew it was dyed ; they simply made an ass 
 of themselves and became a laughing-stock for the 
 community at large. 
 
 I have known old working men who dyed their 
 hair, not from vanity, but pure economic necessity. 
 Gray hairs are no recommendation to the "boss," and 
 these men in some way had to disguise their age
 
 88 HOW TO LIVE ONE HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 to get a chance to live. If any tampering with nature 
 is excusable, this perhaps would come nearest to it, but 
 there is a better way. If the workers will get together, 
 they can see to it that a sane industrial order takes the 
 place of the present haphazard lack of method and 
 system, and then gray-headed men will not need to 
 work for a boss and may wear their gray hairs ia 
 honor and self-respect. 
 
 In conclusion, keep your scalp clean with frequent 
 washing, and well cultivated with frequent and vig- 
 orous brushing and pulling, and open to the wind and 
 the sunshine with frequent outdoor airing and trust 
 Allah for the rest ; for you have done all that mortal 
 man can do to save what hair you have left, and by 
 good behavior you can even hope to cultivate more, 
 but this hope must be before you have neglected it too 
 long. 
 
 If you already have a bald head, cultivate resigna- 
 tion, and learn to use a fly swatter gracefully, but don't 
 waste any good money buying hair restorer from a 
 bald-headed druggist.
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 Time was when the human animal could not see 
 anything smaller than a flea, and when his fears were 
 confined to beasts and reptiles more powerful than 
 himself. 
 
 Today we have subjugated the huge creatures of 
 the forest, and, single-handed, our great and illustrious 
 St. Theodore has tackled the very lion in his den and 
 killed him by the score; he has marched into the 
 jungle with more power than a million savages, but 
 with a good deal of the same instinct and feeling that 
 actuated men who lived in the age of tooth and fang. 
 
 At any rate, we no longer fear big things. 
 
 But now we lay awake nights trembling lest we be 
 overcome by some invisible host of microbes and 
 germs, of which our savage ancestors never dreamed. 
 
 And these germs are no joke; we can't see them 
 with the naked eye to be sure, but we have manufac 
 tured powerful instruments that make little things 
 look big, and so these creatures that dwell by the mil- 
 lions in a glass of water or a decayed apple, have 
 come to have a real meaning and to present a real 
 problem.
 
 90 HOW TO LIVE ONE HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 In fact, we have found that all nature is alive, and 
 that life preys upon life in a most remarkable way, and 
 a most uncomfortable way also, if it happens to be 
 your life that is affected, or "infected," to use the 
 proper term. 
 
 We find that a man's body is actually made up of 
 millions of living organisms, that the blood is com- 
 posed of living creatures, that some of these are white 
 and some red, and that there is a constant conflict 
 going on right inside our very veins and heart. 
 
 We are now taught that diseases are caused by 
 tiny animals, that every breath of air we breathe may 
 be infested with a deadly microbe which has designs 
 on our life; in fact, we know that we are in a world 
 that is teeming with myriads of invisible germs that 
 are destructive to human life, and that we can not 
 turn to the right or the left, or go straight ahead, with- 
 out encountering an army of them ; they fill the air of 
 the city, take possession of the cellar and the garret 
 and all the living-rooms of your home, follow you to 
 the shop or the office, and while you sleep they hover 
 around you, seeking a chance to sink their small fangs 
 into your vitals Ugh! 
 
 After a man has read a bit about these germs he 
 walks around on tiptoe and dare not speak above a 
 whisper for fear that some germ boy-scout will locate 
 him and bring on the army of invasion, and come 
 across and "possess" him. It's nerve racking, this 
 dodging of invisible demons that we see in all their 
 glory and power, thrown up in real life poses at the 
 moving-picture show. 
 
 For all that, I've come to the sensible conclusion
 
 CONQUERING THE GERMS 91 
 
 that the healthy human organism is more than a match 
 for any army of disease germs that ever came down 
 the pike, and that as long as a man lives right and 
 keeps his body clean and free from surfeit deposits, 
 he need not fear if all the germs in Christendom 
 come and roost on his back porch, though a clean 
 man's back porch should be no good roosting-place 
 for germs. 
 
 Given plenty of pure air and sunshine, a simple 
 diet and sensible outdoor exercise, the human organism 
 will cast out any germ that seeks to damage its inter- 
 nal anatomy. The body is supplied with gastric juices 
 and white blood corpuscles and other forces for just 
 this purpose, and when the body is vigorous, all these 
 repelling forces are vigorous, and woe be to the germ 
 that is caught anywhere on the premises. 
 
 But if the body is stuffed full of food that it can't 
 dispose of, and every organ is taxed with foreign 
 deposits, the result of overwork, the germ finds an 
 easy lodging-place and congenial soil in which to com- 
 mence operations. The weakened body, weakened by 
 overindulgence of appetite and bad habits, is the legiti- 
 mate prey of the germ, for nature has evidently cre- 
 ated these germs for just this purpose, the tearing 
 down of an organism that refuses to obey her laws. 
 
 In this fight against the germs it is pretty hard to 
 corner them and destroy them. They are so small, 
 and they breed so rapidly, and they spread over the 
 country so easily, that we can never be sure that they 
 are not around us ; as you read this you may be breath- 
 ing in a million of them. It will be only after society 
 takes the position that human life is more important
 
 92 HOW TO LIVE ONE HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 than profits, and commences a universal crusade 
 against all dust and filth that the germs will be les- 
 sened in any considerable numbers, and even then we 
 can expect to have them, they are a part of nature's 
 plan. 
 
 The individual, however, may free himself from all 
 anxiety if he will simply obey nature's laws and build 
 up his body to a proper point of resistance. You can 
 eat germs dead or alive with impunity if you will stop 
 eating a lot of other things that furnish food for 
 germs inside your body. 
 
 Eat little, breathe much, exercise moderately and 
 keep cheerful, and if you can't keep cheerful always, 
 keep as cheerful as you can, things are bad enough 
 without you going around with a long face. But this 
 doesn't mean that you should be satisfied. If things 
 are not right, change them, and if you can't do this 
 alone, get others to see what's wrong and lend a 
 helping hand. Not all of the parasites are micro- 
 scopic, some of them can be viewed easily with the 
 naked eye. When the race locates a few of these large 
 visible and powerful parasites that prey upon the body 
 politic, then we will have a better chance in our fight 
 with the little fellows that find such a congenial atmos- 
 phere in the slums of our cities.
 
 ion 
 
 of Waste 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 In view of the numerous statements made by 
 writers on economic topics, that there are vast numbers 
 of people in this country who are actually starving, 
 many may consider the information in these articles as 
 contradictory and misleading. 
 
 While it is not unlikely that, for the sake of greater 
 emphasis, the condition of starvation is overexagger 
 ated, it is not the purpose of the author to deny that 
 starvation exists, nor in any way to minimize the 
 work of writers who are striving to eradicate the un- 
 just economic conditions leading up to this most unde- 
 sirable situation. 
 
 My position is this, that a man may actually starve 
 to death when his stomach is full of what is misnamed 
 "food." 
 
 I remember an incident about a horse. A man once 
 bought a nice horse. He did not know much about 
 horses, but he wanted to be good to that horse, so he 
 fed him twelve large ears of corn regularly. The 
 horse got along nicely for a time, but finally he com-
 
 94 HOW TO LIVE ONE HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 menced to run down, his hide got tight and his hair 
 bristly, and he had a gaunt and hungry look in his eye. 
 One night the master inadvertently left the empty 
 bushel basket, from which he had fed the horse, in 
 the manger. The next morning he found the horse 
 had consumed the greater part of the basket, all that 
 he could possibly masticate of it. 
 
 Now no one will maintain that twelve ears of corn 
 three times a day is not sufficient food for a horse, but 
 any horseman will tell you that without abundant 
 "rough stuff," such as hay or fodder, that amount of 
 corn will burn a horse's "insides" out. When the 
 horse ate the basket, he was after "rough stuff," and 
 he got it, but just a little too rough. 
 
 The point I wish to impress is this: it is not the 
 quantity of food that nourishes and builds up the body, 
 but the kind, and that a little good food is much better 
 than a lot of food, either good or bad. 
 
 One's body may be starved by eating too much rich 
 food as well as by eating too little or poor food, food 
 that is adulterated, and the extent to which food is 
 adulterated, in spite of all the "startling exposures" 
 that have been sprung on an unsuspecting public in the 
 past few years, is little understood. 
 
 So great has been this practice of adulteration that 
 even the capitalistic lawmakers have tried to check it, 
 fearing, perhaps, that they themselves will be poisoned 
 if they don't. But when it comes to the ordinary 
 working man's "grub," this question has not yet been 
 considered seriously, and it is here in the "cheap food" 
 that the adulterations are the most flagrant. 
 
 I have taken the position that a very little good
 
 ASSIMILATION AND ELIMINATION 95 
 
 Cultivate resignation and learn to use a fly swatter gracefully.
 
 96 HOW TO LIVE ONE HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 food will properly nourish the body. When the body 
 has to consume a large quantity of "material" to get a 
 little "food," the material that is consumed that is not 
 food is injurious and destroys the organism and inca- 
 pacitates it to assimilate the little real food that is con- 
 tained in the "conglomeration," which is perhaps as 
 good a word as can be employed to designate the 
 average diet. 
 
 To paraphrase the horse incident, there are thou- 
 sands of people who are eating "bushel baskets," in an 
 effort to satisfy an inner craving for something that 
 the system needs and can not subtract from the other 
 material with which it is supplied. 
 
 Then here is another point that must be seriously 
 considered, if you want to travel this road to Wellville. 
 The body may be, from previous abuses, so put out of 
 order that it can not assimilate properly even the very 
 best and purest of food, supplied in the exact amount 
 needed in a normal state. 
 
 Millions of people are troubled with chronic con- 
 stipation. So common is this grievous disorder that 
 but a very few really understand its symptoms or give 
 any special thought to the question, and yet there is 
 nothing of more importance. 
 
 You would not leave a dish of spoiled and stinking 
 food on your table or in your cupboard, and most of 
 you know better than to throw it out in your back 
 yard. But many of you are actually carrying around 
 inside of you food that is in a badly spoiled state, and 
 some of it has been with you for weeks and months 
 even, and is in such a state of decomposition that it is 
 infested with worms, nature's scavengers.
 
 ASSIMILATION AND ELIMINATION 97 
 
 Some of you have a bowel action regularly, about 
 once a week, and some have an action each day ; the 
 fact is, that you must throw out the waste material 
 sooner or later, and the fact that you seem to be doing 
 this, satisfies many who have no specific knowledge 
 of their internal anatomy or how and when it should 
 be done. 
 
 Now put this down as an absolute rule of health: 
 unless the bowels act regularly and normally, good 
 health is an impossibility. 
 
 The fact that you have an action each day is not 
 sufficient, that action must be a proper and normal one, 
 and must cleanse the colon of its contents, not merely 
 eliminate an "instalment" in the shape of dry, hard, 
 blackened fecal matter that comes out only with much 
 straining and even painful distension. 
 
 The full process of food digestion and assimilation 
 is one that requires scientific explanation and the au- 
 thor hasn't any desire to tackle it, nor is it necessary 
 to do so. Suffice to know that in some way nature 
 takes the food that is put in the stomach and does her 
 best to manufacture it into bone, muscle, blood, and 
 physical energy. That the job is quite an important 
 one must be admitted ; and that by intelligent selection 
 of what goes into the stomach we can very greatly 
 assist nature, must also be admitted by thinknig peo- 
 ple, though most people seem to take it for granted 
 that any old thing will do, only so the stomach is filled. 
 
 One thing is certain: the stomach is very often 
 filled with undesirable material from which Nature 
 has great difficulty in selecting for the use of the body 
 such particles as will build up the tissues, replenish
 
 98 HOW TO LIVE ONE HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 the blood, bones, and flesh, and leave a surplus reserve 
 energy stored in each organ of the body. 
 
 Once in the stomach, whatever food is placed there 
 is apt to stay until the stomach, through its digestive 
 process, is able to pass it down into the small intes- 
 tines. Sometimes Nature rebels before this point has 
 been reached and "passes up" the contents of a much- 
 abused and insulted stomach; and in such a case you 
 can be thankful, no matter how disgusting and pain- 
 ful the ordeal, for this "conglomeration" is better out- 
 side of you quickly than left inside to go through the 
 rest of the process and poison the system in every 
 department, as is usually the case. 
 
 Properly masticated, a small amount of good food 
 is easily handled by the stomach and converted into a 
 fluid state very much like milk, which is passed into 
 the small intestines and here taken up into the system 
 by a wonderful process of assimilation that subtracts 
 the particles that go to sustain the different functions 
 of the body. Properly digested, the intestines have 
 no trouble in getting the nourishment that is needed 
 and the waste matter is cast into the colon, and from 
 there out of the body. 
 
 This entire process takes some hours. There are 
 a great many feet of small intestines through which 
 this food has to pass, for Nature has been economical 
 in her plan and designs to get every bit of force she 
 can possibly extract from the food given her. It is for 
 this reason that a small amount of good food suffices, 
 and is better than a large amount. A large amount of 
 food can not be properly masticated in the first place, is 
 not properly digested in the second, and so goes to the
 
 ASSIMILATION AND ELIMINATION 99 
 
 small intestines in an improper form from which it 
 is difficult to subtract the needed elements in the 
 needed state, and hence it is pushed on down into the 
 colon, where it again clogs and often stays for weeks 
 before it finally gets out of the system. 
 
 With most people the body is in a chronic "stuffed'' 
 state, the stomach can not empty until the small intes- 
 tines empty, and in turn the small intestines can not 
 empty until the colon empties. Each is kept filled to 
 its capacity, and immediately when the stomach is 
 emptied, and is just settling down for a little much- 
 needed rest, cerchunk ! in comes another gob of stuff 
 that must be taken care of in some way. Many people 
 don't even allow the stomach to get empty at all ; they 
 keep filling it up just as soon as there is a little space 
 at the top. 
 
 It is a shame how we treat these faithful organs 
 of ours in our selfish effort to gratify our APPE- 
 TITES, which we invariably do at the expense of our 
 bodily health. 
 
 Talk about an eight-hour day some people work 
 their internal anatomy an even twenty-four hours out 
 of every twenty-four, and still we wonder why people 
 die young. We better wonder how they live as long 
 as they do. 
 
 But to return to our problem of digestion. I am 
 not much of a"fan," but the stomach might be likened 
 unto first base in a ball game. If the other three 
 bases are open, there is a chance of making a home 
 run, but if second and third the intestines and the 
 colon are filled, the man has got to stay on first base 
 longer than he should; he has to wait till there is a
 
 100 HOW TO LIVE ONE HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 vacancy, until some Ty Cobb comes to bat and lands 
 the ball over the fence and cleans up all the bases. 
 
 The physical Ty Cobb that the human race has 
 been playing has been a dose of epsom salts or castor 
 oil, but the trouble is that it don't really clean up the 
 bases, though it usually makes a hole through the mass 
 of clogged-up matter. The situation is still wrong. 
 In other words, "Ty" fails to land one over the fence ; 
 he just strikes a foul, and is caught out. 
 
 The idea I am trying to give you is that you 
 should not let your system get clogged, that you should 
 stop the "stuffing" habit. If, however, you do get 
 clogged up, use the water enema; it is by far the 
 quickest and most proper way of inside cleaning. 
 
 The habitual use of drugs, pills, etc., for causing 
 bowel action is harmful in the extreme, and falls far 
 short of accomplishing the needed results. 
 
 Now get this: you can't continually stuff your 
 stomach and expect your body properly to eliminate 
 the amount of material you put into it, even though 
 you do this in an effort to supply pure food from a 
 lot of rubbish ; the effect on the system is the same. 
 The system can take care of some waste, is built pur- 
 posely to do this, but there is a limit to its normal 
 capacity. A five-horse-power engine, speeded up to 
 the limit, might do for a while the work that a ten- 
 horse-power engine working normally ought to do, 
 but the life of that five-horse-power engine would be 
 greatly shortened, and that's just the thing that is 
 happening with the race today. 
 
 We have given our bodies impossible tasks, not 
 in feats of strength and endurance along the lines of
 
 ASSIMILATION AND ELIMINATION 101 
 
 Such "stuff" would make a well man sick.
 
 102 HOW TO LIVE ONE HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 outside activity, but in feats of strength and endurance 
 along the lines of inside activity. 
 
 Now note again : if the food is kept in the stomach 
 too long, it ferments, and instead of emptying food 
 laden into the intestines, it fills them with a mess of 
 matter in which the food properties have already been 
 largely destroyed, some of them turned into poisons 
 by the wonderful chemistry of the body. If the small 
 intestines can not quickly dispose of this mess into the 
 colon, these poisons are taken into the system and pass 
 through the kidneys or are pushed out through the 
 glands of the skin. Nature makes every effort to 
 eliminate the poison quickly, but a continued con- 
 gested state means that the kidneys and other organs 
 also become overworked, and the flesh filled with pu- 
 trid matter, until the body is filled with disease and 
 fairly stinks. No wonder frequent bathing is neces- 
 sary for some people to keep the body smelling 
 sweetly. 
 
 But finally this matter, what is left of it, is pushed 
 into the colon. Here nature has provided a large 
 reservoir in case of emergency and to furnish ample 
 room for normal operation. It is at this point, how- 
 ever, that some of the most serious complications 
 result, for the colon, in spite of its liberal capacity, 
 finally becomes clogged and its normal muscular action 
 eventually destroyed by the hard f eces that dries to its 
 walls. Eventually there is just a small hole through 
 this putrid mass that permits the egress of waste 
 material, which, having no natural muscular action to 
 eliminate it, is only eliminated by pressure, one wad 
 pushing out another wad until, in the course of a week
 
 ASSIMILATION AND ELIMINATION 103 
 
 or so, the matter gets through the colon and is de- 
 posited in a dried hard chunk of blackened excrement, 
 and some people call this a healthy action, or fail to 
 take any cognizance of it at all. 
 
 Human excrement should be light in color and soft 
 in consistency. It should be deposited without strain- 
 ing, and regularly in the morning. The colon should 
 be entirely cleaned by this process each day, as should 
 every other organ of the body be permitted to do its 
 task and have a proper rest period. 
 
 Try this test : stop eating for a week ; it won't hurt 
 you a bit. You will find if you have not been living 
 properly that you will keep getting refuse out of your 
 system for days and days after you stop putting any- 
 thing in, and if you are observing, you will be sur- 
 prised, almost dumbfounded, to know where it comes 
 from. In such a case you are just giving your body 
 a chance in this way to get rid of a lot of material 
 that you have forced upon it, and that it could not 
 eliminate in the ordinary run of the tasks assigned it. 
 
 Many of you who read this have something like a 
 bushel of waste matter stored away in your system 
 right now, matter that is harmful, that ought to be 
 eliminated, that is stopping up different organs and 
 keeping them from functioning naturally, that is caus- 
 ing you aches and pains and distress. 
 
 Why not be sensible and have a good inside house 
 cleaning ? 
 
 Now house cleaning is not a pleasant time of the 
 year. When you come home some night and find the 
 carpets all up and the rooms full of dust, and every- 
 thing upside down, your easy chair in the woodshed,
 
 104 HOW TO LIVE ONE HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 and your slippers in the coal bin, if a mere man, you 
 are apt to remark, "Darn this house-cleaning business, 
 everything is dirtier now than it was before.'' And 
 this remark would hold true, if you judged by the 
 visible dirt at hand. But the house cleaner does not 
 bring into the home any new dirt, she just digs it out 
 of the corners and from behind the pictures and other 
 places where it has lodged. And so with your internal 
 house cleaning, it will not be a pleasant time, and 
 your entire system will probably be turned upside 
 down, and you will feel, oh, so miserable ! during this 
 period of going without food ; but old Mother Nature 
 will improve every moment you give her to set your 
 house in the best possible shape. 
 
 And after it is all over, you will feel like a new 
 being, and the little flesh, not counting the rubbish, 
 you have lost in the fast will come back to you a 
 pound a day or more, and you will be very glad indeed 
 that you cleaned out your internal house. But don't 
 forget at this point what got the house dirty, and be 
 wise to the point of keeping it clean ever afterwards. 
 Also do not try an experiment of this kind until you 
 know just what you are doing and why you are do- 
 ing it.
 
 ,tve 
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 Very few people starve to death. 
 
 Many people, however, suffer from malnutrition, 
 lack of proper food, and a great many more from over- 
 eating. 
 
 Now here is a bold statement, one that will be dis- 
 puted at once by those who have not given thought to 
 the subject: one of the greatest causes of disease is 
 overeating. 
 
 I trust my readers will give me at least a chance to 
 prove this assertion, and, better still, will take the 
 trouble to prove it for themselves through individual 
 experimentation. 
 
 In the first place, very few people understand the 
 actual requirements of the body as to the kind and 
 amount of food needed to replace its waste tissue and 
 supply it with vital energy. 
 
 The average person has been "brought up" on at 
 least three so-called "square" meals a day ; some have 
 habitually "pieced" between meals ; and most all have 
 naturally, or at least easily, assumed that this is the 
 proper procedure.
 
 106 HOW TO LIVE ONE HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 To miss one meal seems to these people to be a 
 severe privation, a matter for interesting conversation 
 for days afterwards, and to be forcibly deprived of 
 food for twenty-four hours is often considered "dan- 
 gerous," while to be without food for several days, 
 say entombed in a mine, this is not only considered 
 dangerous, but abundant proof can be furnished to 
 show that it is dangerous to people uneducated re- 
 garding the real power of the human body to go with- 
 out food. Under such circumstances people very often 
 are supposed to starve to death, but this is a mistake ; 
 it is not starvation, but fright that kills them. 
 
 Here, then, is a most wonderful demonstration of 
 the power of the mind over the body. And it will be 
 well for you, dear reader, to remember this statement, 
 for you may sometime be placed in a similar condition 
 and be compelled to fast a considerable length of time ; 
 in such a case I am sure that what follows will be very 
 valuable information to you, and may enable you to 
 save your own life and the lives of many around you. 
 
 Of recent years a great many people have fasted. 
 There are now a number of books written on the sub- 
 ject. These fasts have been entered into for various 
 reasons some for notoriety, some for scientific ex- 
 periment, and many for the cure of various diseases 
 and disorders of the body. Whatever else may have 
 resulted, this is certain, that it has been absolutely 
 proven beyond a doubt that the body can live for thirty 
 days without one particle of food ; in truth, thirty days 
 is now a short fast, for cases of ninety days' fast are 
 on record, and forty and fifty days are not unusual. 
 
 Now I can hear you say, "Well, some people might
 
 FEASTING OR FASTING 107 
 
 be able to do that, but I can't." To be frank, should 
 you not say, "I won't" ? There is no question but that 
 you could if you would. There is a question, how- 
 ever, whether it would be desirable for you to do this. 
 
 It is not normal for man to fast; he is naturally 
 an "eating" animal, and a certain amount of proper 
 food is desirable each day. But neither is it natural 
 for man to be sick; the normal condition is health. 
 If one is sick, then it is sensible to find out why one is 
 sick, and having found out why, to remove the cause 
 and take such measures as will assist nature in travel- 
 ing the road back to health and strength. 
 
 When one is sick, the usual thing is to call lustily 
 for a "doctor." So constant and numerous are these 
 calls that in this country we have thousands and thou- 
 sands of "medicine men," hurrying around with auto- 
 mobiles, trying to "call"' on every caller with the re- 
 sult that the more doctors we have the more we seem 
 to need, and we have established medical colleges that 
 are now turning them out by the hundreds. 
 
 Fact is, it's quite a "business" these days, this "doc- 
 toring business," and along with it the business of the 
 undertaker, the coffin maker, and the sexton. 
 
 Now suppose you are sick; it's not necessary to 
 make any "supposition" with most of you; very few 
 people are actually well, in perfect health. Most of us 
 are just able to crawl around, our ailments are often 
 so protracted that they become chronic, and many 
 thousands never know what it is to be free from some 
 kind of ache or pain, unless the "doctor" dopes them 
 with something, often morphine or worse. 
 
 But we will say now that you are suffering from
 
 108 HOW TO LIVE ONE HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 some acute and manifestly distressing disease; old 
 Mother Nature is trying her best to tell you there is 
 something wrong that's PAIN, and the purpose of 
 pain, which is the "guardian angel" of the body. 
 
 You've tried the old ideas a long time, and you 
 have never been permanently bettered. Of course 
 you have been sick and got well, or so you are able to 
 "get up and around," but you haven't been actually 
 well for years, that's the condition of millions of 
 people today. Now suppose you try something new. 
 
 I understand that few people want to "experiment" 
 on themselves, but it's about as safe as letting some 
 "doctor" experiment on you, and much cheaper. 
 
 Here is the idea: when you get sick, or when you 
 know that you are not in perfect health, investigate 
 the "fast cure." <> \ -*\ 
 
 Most ailments come from the different organs of 
 the body being clogged up with foreign matter of 
 some kind in the nature of poisons, gases, waste, or 
 germs. (Perhaps I am not using the correct "med- 
 ical" terms to make myself clear to the "doctors," but 
 this article is not written with any idea that it will 
 ever receive their attention, and the average "patient" 
 will know, or be able to guess, what I mean from my 
 "unprofessional language.") 
 
 If the sewer system of a city gets clogged up, they 
 don't give it a dose of pills, they flush it with water; 
 if your system gets clogged up, and that's the matter 
 with most of you most of the time, do the same thing. 
 To do this properly, first stop putting in any more 
 clogging material; in other words, stop eating, and 
 then drink plenty of water often, and take internal
 
 FEASTING OR FASTING 109 
 
 baths (which are absolutely necessary in a fast) regu- 
 larly once or twice a day, until every particle of mat- 
 ter is eliminated. 
 
 The idea is this : the fast gives nature a chance to 
 clean you out, clean out every diseased organ, and stop 
 feeding every abnormal growth. 
 
 The beneficial results from fasting are little less 
 than marvelous. The cures from so-called "incurable" 
 diseases border on the miraculous. It's like putting 
 an old and much-abused automobile into a good work- 
 shop and having it completely overhauled ; it runs like 
 a new car when you take it out, but of course it isn't 
 a new car, nor will you have a new body, but you will 
 come very near to having one, if you take a complete 
 fast and get rid of the old one almost down to the 
 bones and skin, and this can be done without injury 
 and with positive benefit, startling as it may appear. 
 
 And now I suppose you recall stories of ship- 
 wrecked crews and the story writers' vivid pictures of 
 the awful agony of "hunger pangs" when people are 
 starving, and you shudder and say, "Not for mine, 
 thank you !" 
 
 Strange to say, there is very little inconvenience 
 from hunger during a fast, and this chiefly at the very 
 start of it. At the second, or third day at the most, 
 all desire for food usually disappears, and until it 
 reappears naturally, the fast should not be broken. 
 
 Strange again, but many people while fasting are 
 not inconvenienced by physical exhaustion, and after 
 the system has become in a measure accustomed to the 
 fast they find their strength, lost in the first part of it, 
 and are able to do vigorous physical feats. For in-
 
 110 HOW TO LIVE ONE HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 stance, an authentic case is recorded where a young 
 lady walked twenty-four miles on the twentieth day 
 of her fast without any serious fatigue. 
 
 As a rule the first and second days of the fast are 
 the hardest; the craving for food will be very notice- 
 able, especially at meal times ; the stomach will be all 
 upset; the tongue will commence to get a thick coat, 
 the breath to be offensive, and you will literally feel 
 "all in." It is about this point, possibly the third day, 
 that most people with weak backbones stop, and for- 
 ever after they go around telling about how they 
 "fasted" and how it did them no good, etc. 
 
 Fortunately there are many who, when they go 
 into a thing, go in to win out, and refuse to give up 
 until they have made a thorough attempt according to 
 the requirements. These people first study up on the 
 question to the point of convincing themselves that 
 others have been greatly benefited by fasting, that it 
 is not dangerous, that one can easily go a month with- 
 out food and without any serious consequences to the 
 body, and so they stick through the first few dis- 
 agreeable days, stick until old Mother Nature says to 
 them, "Having made a thorough job of my house 
 cleaning and put this body in the best possible shape, 
 considering the previous injuries done to it, now I'm 
 ready for business again." 
 
 The only danger from fasting comes in breaking 
 the fast. The fast can be broken at any time, but if 
 broken before hunger appears naturally, the bene- 
 ficial effects will be only partial, though even a short 
 fast is helpful. No matter how miserable you feel, 
 and many do feel miserable all through this ordeal, for
 
 FEASTING OR FASTING HI 
 
 in a sense it is an ordeal, you need not worry as long 
 as you are drinking plenty of water and taking your 
 enemas regularly. Not until the tongue cleans up 
 should you take food of any kind ; it will start around 
 the edges first, a nice little red band, and keep working 
 inward until you have the nicest little soft red tongue, 
 full of "taste" for the food, that you will soon be eat- 
 ing with a relish that you have not known since the 
 days when you were a barefooted kid. 
 
 There are several ways advocated to break a fast. 
 The writer broke a fast once by using grape juice, just 
 a tablespoonful to start with, and increasing the dose 
 gradually each hour up to a glassful. The second day 
 he started on milk and gradually kept increasing the 
 quantity for several days. Many "fast experts" ad- 
 vocate living on an exclusive milk diet for a week or 
 so after the fast. Milk does not agree with some 
 people, and in such cases this would probably not be 
 best. Broths and easily digested solid foods can be 
 quickly substituted, though one must ever bear in 
 mind that after the fast is broken the appetite is rave- 
 nous and must be controlled until the body becomes 
 normal weight. 
 
 In most cases the lost weight is regained inside a 
 couple of weeks, and usually to people who were under 
 weight before the fast several pounds of good clean 
 tissue is added. In cases of overweight the fast al- 
 ways helps to bring the body back to its proper normal 
 weight. 
 
 Here is the entire situation in a nut shell: if you 
 have lived right and are in perfect health, as you will 
 be, then there is no sense in your fasting, unless you
 
 112 HOW TO LIVE ONE HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 do this as a "spiritual experience," and there are some 
 interesting results in this particular. But if you are 
 not in perfect health, fasting will give nature a chance 
 to clean out the impurities from your system and give 
 you a new lease of life in a way that only a personal 
 experience can convince you is possible. 
 
 I know of a certain lady whose health had run 
 down to an alarming point. She finally could stand 
 the strain no longer, and went to a physician who 
 diagnosed her case as pronounced diabetes. Not sat- 
 isfied with the one examination, she went to two other 
 physicians and received the same report; this threw 
 her into a frightened state that immensely aggravated 
 the difficulty and she was constantly up and down, up 
 and down, throughout the night, and the urinal dis- 
 charge was very copious; it was a mystery where all 
 the water came from. The lady had a floating kidney, 
 and the physicians all advised an immediate operation. 
 The matter looked very serious, so serious that she 
 took a trip to Battle Creek to have an examination 
 there at the sanitarium. The result of this trip was 
 not satisfactory, and she came back more discouraged 
 than ever. At this time I had been reading up on the 
 matter of fasting, and also had taken a short experi- 
 mental fast of seven days, and I advised that this lady 
 take a fast. She had not studied the matter herself, 
 but on the promise of a trip to the Southland, her 
 home (for this lady happens to be my wife), she 
 finally consented and the fast began. 
 
 It was a very trying ordeal for both of us. The 
 amount of matter that was thrown out from the sys- 
 tem was unbelievable. It seemed that the little woman
 
 FEASTING OR FASTING 113 
 
 would actually turn inside out, and the vomiting spells 
 were very frequent and very painful. She was soon 
 so weak that she took to the bed. On the second day 
 the desire for food left her, and later when she found 
 she had no desire to eat, she became frightened, and 
 on the fifth day this grew upon her so that she felt 
 that she was going to pass in her checks right away. 
 Her nervous mental condition became so serious that 
 we decided to break the fast, though it had not really 
 a good start. For all that, she soon found she could 
 eat, and in a remarkably short time she was strong 
 enough for her trip South, and when she returned 
 a month later, she was almost one of these "new 
 women" we read so much about, having added many 
 pounds of good healthy flesh and having completely 
 eliminated, for the time being, her old complaint. I 
 verily believe my wife would be dead today if we had 
 followed the advice of the three physicians, and if she 
 had not taken that fast; and that's recommendation 
 enough to convince me that fasting beats filling one's 
 hide with a lot of "dope" called medicine, or cutting 
 out one's internal organs. 
 
 An anticipated question, and a frank answer: 
 "For what kind of diseases do you advise fasting?" 
 I do not advise fasting at all. All I do advise is 
 that you carefully study into the subject and decide 
 the matter for yourself on the merits of the case. 
 
 I will say this, however, that there is good evidence 
 to prove that even cancer can be cured in this manner ; 
 and I am personally convinced that any disease that 
 the doctors can even "better," can be completely cured 
 through fasting.
 
 114 HOW TO LIVE ONE HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 And this in parting: if you ever decide to go 
 through a fast, also decide that when you get through 
 you will start in at that point to live right, for unless 
 you do the fast will be but a temporary freedom from 
 disease. You can't disobey nature's laws and be 
 healthy. If you are determined to gratify your appe- 
 tite and follow your bad habits, what's the use of 
 fasting at all ? The sooner the fool-killer gets you the 
 better it will be for the race. 
 
 A FRANK STATEMENT OF FACTS 
 
 Patient "Is it absolutely necessary to operate on me, doctor?" 
 Doctor "Well, ahem, not exactly necessary, but customary."
 
 PIGS OR FIGS! 
 
 Must we eat hog 
 to live ? 
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 Many people are psychologized with the idea that 
 one can not live without animal or flesh food. 
 
 To prove the contrary requires no argument ; it is 
 merely a matter of fact that millions of people live on 
 a vegetarian diet all their lives. 
 
 It is also a clear matter of historic deduction, that 
 for countless ages our prehistoric ancestors lived on 
 what is termed "innocent" food fruits, nuts, vegeta- 
 bles, cereals, roots, etc. 
 
 It may be argued that they had no weapons and 
 were not able to procure flesh food, and it is true that 
 man in his most primitive condition was weaponless, 
 but nature provided him, as she provides every animal, 
 with just the food he needed. 
 
 The using of fish as food came only after the fear 
 of fire had been conquered and mankind had learned 
 to control and use it to his own advantage, a long 
 and interesting chapter in human history not to be told
 
 116 HOW TO LIVE ONE HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 in this connection. (Read "The Story of the Giants 
 and Their Tools," by same author.) 
 
 To get right down to brass tacks, all animal organ- 
 isms are sustained by the vegetable kingdom. It is 
 only a question as to whether you will eat "first hand" 
 or "second hand" vegetables most people draw the 
 line on "third hand" vegetables. 
 
 Here is the idea : if you eat a chicken, the chicken 
 ate corn, and it is the corn, not the chicken, that is the 
 original source of life-sustaining energy; as stated 
 above, the chicken is only second-class vegetable mat- 
 ter. 
 
 If you eat cow, the cow ate grass, and you are 
 eating second-hand grass. 
 
 Now, from this, you may argue : "Seeing I am not 
 able to eat grass first hand, and seeing I am able to eat 
 cow, then is it not wisdom for me to let the cow eat 
 the grass, that I may eat the cow?" 
 
 The logic seems to be good, at least it has con- 
 vinced many who wanted to be favorably impressed, 
 but it is not conclusive. 
 
 Why does the cow eat grass? 
 
 The answer the cow would give, were she able to 
 speak, would be that she is hungry, and grass satisfies 
 her appetite, it is her natural food. 
 
 The answer science gives is that the grass supplies 
 the cow with energy which she consumes, and while 
 some of this energy is still in her body when she is 
 killed for food, in the form of new life cells, there are 
 also dead cells that are not food, but refuse that the 
 cow can't use, or rather that the cow has used, and 
 that the human who eats the cow must use over again.
 
 MUST WE EAT HOG TO LIVE? 117 
 
 By the above is meant that in every animal organ- 
 ism there is a constant process of decay going on, dead 
 cells are being replaced by live ones, and flesh is com- 
 posed of both. 
 
 Flesh food, then, is not the best food, because the 
 energy has already been used by the animal, and the 
 flesh is full of waste that can not be utilized, nor is it 
 good for other reasons equally important. 
 
 In the first place, it is not the natural food of man, 
 for man is not naturally a carnivorous animal, but 
 belongs to the fruit and nut eaters. 
 
 Flesh alone will not sustain human life. The dire 
 results that come from a purely flesh diet, when such 
 a diet is enforced, are a matter of record, and horrible 
 to contemplate. Flesh can only be used in connection 
 with other vegetable and real food, and when used a 
 great many undesirable if not serious physical results 
 are sure to follow. 
 
 Flesh is not a "humane" food; it requires cruelty 
 to procure it. The "butcher" business is not elevating 
 or ennobling. The man who makes a business of 
 striking helpless cattle in the head with an ax and then 
 cutting their throats is brutalized by the work he does, 
 and the society that requires this work to be done is 
 also brutalized. 
 
 The ripe peach drops from the tree into the hand ; 
 its food element may be consumed, and its pit may be 
 planted and bring forth another tree. In other words, 
 by plucking and eating the peach you but assist the 
 process of nature. To grow peaches, to make two 
 grow where one grew before, this is ennobling; the 
 man who works at it is a public benefactor. To
 
 118 HOW TO LIVE ONE HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 gather nuts, to sow and reap grain, to cultivate corn, 
 all these pursuits are pleasant and uplifting, they bring 
 man close to old Mother Nature, they fill his lungs 
 with the breath of life, and provide food for his body 
 that is full of life-giving energy. 
 
 To "stick" a hog and listen to its piteous squealing 
 and death gurgle is brutal; it deadens the faculty of 
 pity; it hardens the heart of compassion; it sears the 
 very soul and helps to make mankind what it is today, 
 a community of carnivorous animals, preying upon 
 each other, shrewd, cunning, merciless, bestial, and 
 thirsting for blood. 
 
 If it were necessary, it would be different. 
 
 But it is not necessary, nor is it desirable, nor is it 
 economic. 
 
 It takes about eight pounds of good corn to make 
 one pound of what has been politely designated as 
 "sow-bosom"; and any one of these eight pounds of 
 good corn will supply far more life energy to the 
 human body than will one pound of filthy flesh, for 
 when flesh is considered in its proper light, as food it 
 is really filthy in that it contains dead cells, and fur- 
 ther, that it makes the body into which it is taken 
 filthy and unclean. 
 
 If flesh is good food, why not eat animals that eat 
 flesh, thus getting "third hand" vegetables? It must 
 be admitted that many people do eat carnivorous ani- 
 mals, but they are generally eaten at a time when the 
 animals are living on vegetable food. The darkey 
 prefers his "possom" in persimmon time, and the 
 white man prefers his "hog" corn fed, but he doesn't 
 always get him that way. I have seen hogs fattened
 
 MUST WE EAT HOG TO LIVE? H9 
 
 from the refuse of a slaughter house that were wal- 
 lowing in blood and offal, and no more fit for food 
 than the buzzards that got their food from the same 
 supply. 
 
 A carnivorous animal brought up on milk and inno- 
 cent food can be kept tame, but once he gets the taste 
 of blood, he becomes dangerous. Carnivorous animals 
 are supposed to live on flesh, we are making no argu- 
 ment to the contrary; but the fact remains that the 
 kind of food that an animal eats affects its disposition, 
 and this will apply absolutely to the human animal. 
 
 If you want to try an experiment and you have a 
 tame, good-dispositioned dog, just feed him on raw 
 meat exclusively. It won't hurt the dog, that's a nat- 
 ural food for dogs; but before long the dog will be- 
 come cross and snappy and bite some one. So you 
 better not try that experiment after all. 
 
 I'll tell you a better one. Perhaps you know some 
 person in your family who is cross and snappy, and 
 possibly you are just a bit cross and snappy yourself ; 
 well, in a case like this, where you have so much better 
 chance to make a good experiment, spare the dog. 
 
 If the women only knew how much dirty work they 
 could save themselves by teaching their family to live 
 on innocent food, it would be a great point in their 
 favor, and the average housewife has enough work 
 to do without adding unnecessary burdens. 
 
 The very best diet is the cheapest and the easiest 
 to prepare. 
 
 In fact, no preparation at all is needed. 
 
 Fruit and nuts are best eaten in their raw state, 
 and with milk you have a perfect diet. It sounds so
 
 120 HOW TO LIVE ONE HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 simple that it staggers your credulity. You are used 
 to coming to a table with steaming viands, slabs of 
 greasy meat, gravies, pickles, and a variety of con- 
 glomerations, clear down to "hash" ; in fact, it is all 
 "hash" after it is thrown into the stomach in the usual 
 manner. 
 
 Fruit, nuts, and milk may be a part of this layout, 
 but these things are considered only as "accessories" 
 of small consequence. You think you have to have 
 something that will "stick to your ribs," as you ex- 
 press it. The fact is that a good many of these things 
 stick to your liver, stick to your kidneys, stick to your 
 colon, and the harder they stick, the worse off it is 
 for you. 
 
 But, "Goodness, gracious !" you exclaim ; you don't 
 expect one to live on just fruit and nuts and milk? 
 No, I really don't expect some of you to change your 
 habits of eating one iota. You have become so thor- 
 oughly saturated with the psychology of your age and 
 accustomed to the habits you have formed or that have 
 been formed for you, that you are bound by them as 
 with chains of steel. It is just here and there that one 
 finds a human being that really wants to be human, 
 and is willing to live human in order to grow into the 
 full stature of normal manhood and womanhood as 
 originally designed by the Great Architect. 
 
 For all that, if you will try this experiment of 
 right living just one month, faithfully, conscientiously, 
 and intelligently, you will willingly join the small group 
 of mortals who are earnestly striving to live in ac- 
 cordance with the physical laws of their being, that 
 they may by so living have more abundant life. You
 
 MUST WE EAT HOG TO LIVE? 121 
 
 The struggle for existence in an adverse environment.
 
 122 HOW TO LIVE ONE HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 will find you have not suffered in any way, unless 
 merely through a craving of your abnormal appetite 
 for abnormal things, just the same way a toper will 
 suffer when his dram is taken away from him. But 
 your physical body will be in better trim than it was 
 at the beginning of the experiment. 
 
 As a matter of fact, I am not asking you to give 
 up anything that is really good for you, not even the 
 gratification of your appetite, for you will find that 
 the right kind of food for you is best relished, once 
 you get your system straightened out and used to it. 
 You will find but what's the use telling you, when 
 you can make the experiment and find out these things 
 for yourself? 
 
 Listen! If people will live in accordance with the 
 laws of their physical being, they will always be well, 
 for health is the normal condition, and disease always 
 comes from disobedience to law, usually through ig- 
 norance, but that does not save you from the conse- 
 quences. 
 
 Listen again! If you will really apply some of 
 these things I am telling you to your own life, you 
 will soon forget the doctor's telephone number. 
 
 Maybe you don't think these things worth while, 
 as compared with the extreme pleasure of eating pig, 
 and paying doctors' bills. Well, you may side in 
 with the pig, to get the pig "inside" of you, but as 
 for myself, I prefer health and strength, and to stop 
 the sacrifice of the pig; and if you will leave it to the 
 pig, you will find that even a pig can see the force of 
 my argument, and will vote for the speedy coming of 
 the day when no man will so debase himself as to seek
 
 MUST WE EAT HOG TO LIVE? 123 
 
 to draw his life energy from a poor pig, or a fat one 
 either. 
 
 Joking aside why not try it out, not the pig, but 
 the one month experiment living on two meals of 
 "innocent food," fruits, nuts, and milk. 
 
 You need not confine yourself strictly to the above ; 
 honey, cheese, and vegetables may be added, celery, 
 carrots, turnips, cabbage, etc., all eaten in their nat- 
 ural stage, and thoroughly masticated. You can add 
 graham crackers also for the honey, and a fresh raw 
 egg whipped in your milk. Oh, don't worry, you are 
 not going to starve; you are just going to give your 
 system a chance to straighten out and get normal. 
 
 Be very careful not to overeat, by thoroughly mas- 
 ticating everything; if you do this, you will never 
 overeat. And don't forget this, that overeating good 
 food is just as bad as eating poor food. To stop eat- 
 ing pig, and then make a pig of yourself, that won't 
 do at all. There are pigs enough already without 
 your adding yourself to the list. 
 
 It will probably take some time to shrink your 
 "tummy" down to normal proportions so that a rea- 
 sonable amount of food will seem to "fill" it. It is 
 really disgraceful how some people have stuffed and 
 stuffed and stuffed their poor "tummies" till they have 
 spread out all over the front of them, and they look 
 like balloons with legs on 'em. We even find people 
 who are actually proud of these abnormally stretched 
 abdomens. If you have one, don't boast about it any 
 more; it is simply the evidence of gluttony, if you 
 will permit the plain statement, and also the evidence 
 of disease. Some fat may be permissible as stored
 
 124 HOW TO LIVE ONE HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 food, but any amount of it that distorts the human 
 form is not only undesirable but dangerous. The 
 normal human figure is neither fat nor skinny, but 
 well rounded and graceful, athletic, and mobile. Such 
 a figure is best built and sustained on natural food, 
 such as old Mother Nature herself provides ready, 
 agreeable, nourishing, and procurable without cruelty 
 or the shedding of blood.
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 There are people who maintain that three or four 
 hours' sleep each night is sufficient, and that most of 
 the race are wasting a good deal of valuable time in 
 this manner. Examples of noted men are cited who 
 have lived with just a few hours of sleep in the twenty- 
 four, but most of these men have died young. 
 
 The writer believes that at least eight hours, and 
 in some cases more, of dreamless sleep is desirable. 
 Sleep is the great restorer of fagged-out energy; 
 during this period the body recuperates its strength 
 and gets itself in trim for the wakeful period of 
 activity. 
 
 The first hours of the morning after sleep are the 
 best for hard mental and physical tasks. At this 
 period the body is at the apex of its strength, and it 
 is a shame that so many people insult it by this harm- 
 ful "breakfast habit," and at once start the organs on 
 their daily grind to eliminate the food that is stuffed 
 into it, regardless of whether it needs food or not. 
 
 There is certainly much confusion of ideas on this
 
 126 HOW TO LIVE ONE HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 question of feeding the body. Some people seem to 
 think that the body immediately consumes the food 
 given it and transfers it into energy. This is a serious 
 mistake. You get no energy from the food you eat 
 at the time you eat it, or for hours and hours after- 
 wards, and you consume energy in the digestive proc- 
 ess, energy that you often might better consume in 
 other ways. 
 
 Take this as a suggestion and work it out by ex- 
 perimentation. If you have a large task to perform, 
 mental or physical, do it on an empty stomach. If you 
 want to collect your thoughts and, say, write an article 
 that embodies the best that is in you, do it early in the 
 morning, and before you have tasted food, excepting a 
 copious intake of the fresh morning air. If you are to 
 deliver a lecture and wish to have the best command 
 of all your faculties and vocal powers, do not eat for 
 at least five or six hours preceding this lecture. 
 
 The business world is full of mental wrecks 
 verging on nervous prostration ; nine-tenths of this 
 comes from the bad habit of working the brain 
 and the stomach at the same time ; it can't be done 
 successfully and without injury. 
 
 Bear this in mind: whenever you have a mental 
 task that is a severe strain: eat very sparingly, if at 
 all, and you will come through it admirably. The 
 reasons are that in great mental activity the blood and 
 vital forces rush to the head, where they are needed, 
 and if one has food in the stomach it is apt to sour or 
 be very improperly taken care of, or if taken care of 
 properly, the head suffers, on the basis that one can't 
 d.0 two important things well at the sanie time-
 
 MISCELLANEOUS POINTS 
 
 127 
 
 Never eat when worried or mentally distressed.
 
 128 HOW TO LIVE ONE HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 For brain workers this question of overeating is 
 far more important than many will concede. The hard 
 manual worker can use up a good deal of food in 
 exercise, though he also has a tendency to overeat, be- 
 cause much of the food is not what the system should 
 have, and a greater bulk is consumed in order to get 
 the needed elements, and also because of cultivated 
 habit. But the office and factory, clerks and indoor 
 workers almost invariably eat too much, especially the 
 sedentary brain workers. 
 
 People have blindly accepted the theory that food 
 gives strength, without understanding that it is only 
 under certain conditions that it gives strength, and 
 these conditions are that it be properly assimilated. 
 Any food that is taken into the system and not assimi- 
 lated gives no strength and is an element of weakness, 
 requiring the expenditure of strength to eliminate it. 
 
 A small amount of food may give more strength 
 than a large amount, just the same as a small amount 
 of gasoline properly mixed with air will give a stronger 
 power explosion than a large amount. If you run an 
 automobile, just cover the air intake on the carburetor 
 and see how soon the engine will foul and stop com- 
 pletely. Here is the secret of food combustion as well : 
 we must learn to use more air and water and less solid 
 food. It is really remarkable when you know how 
 very little food will supply the body with its maximum 
 vitality and strength. 
 
 Nature does her best to take up the oversupply of 
 material forced upon her. With many she manufac- 
 tures this into fatty tissue, and as a result we see peo- 
 ple whose abdomens are abnormally distended and
 
 MISCELLANEOUS POINTS 129 
 
 whose frame is covered with flabby tissue. Some fat 
 is permissible, just enough to round out the figure in 
 graceful curves, but too much is worse than none at 
 all. Excessive fat is not an evidence of health but of 
 disease. Most fat people could fast a couple of 
 months with great benefit, and suffer very little, for 
 they would simply consume the stored food of their 
 bodies ; as Upton Sinclair says, "This is hardly to be 
 called a fast." 
 
 With most people appetite is altogether abnormal ; 
 the more they eat the more they want; they never 
 feel satisfied until the stomach is filled to its fullest 
 capacity, and extended far beyond its normal size. 
 When the body is perfectly normal, just a very little 
 food satisfies; there is no craving and no desire to 
 fill up the stomach like a bag or a small balloon. 
 
 With many there is a constant craving for food, 
 even a full stomach does not stop it. The system, 
 starving for nourishment, has reached a stage of over- 
 stuffing that uses all its powers to eliminate the great 
 gobs of food that are piled inside the stomach and 
 from which no vital energy is assimilated. This is a 
 serious state to get into ; acute dyspepsia follows when 
 finally the stomach refuses the food, or it causes great 
 distress. The way out is simple enough : clean out and 
 tone up your system by a thorough fast, and then live 
 right when you start in eating again, eating moderately 
 such. food as is proper, and being careful to eliminate 
 all waste regularly. 
 
 With regard to the question of sleep, by all means 
 sleep outdoors if you can, or as nearly outdoors as you 
 can, and this means have all the windows, and doors
 
 130 HOW TO LIVE ONE HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 too, open throughout the night. Sleep at least eight 
 hours, and sleep at night it is the natural time to 
 sleep; only owls and bats and skunks prowl around 
 nights. If you have any "prowling" to do, get through 
 with it in the early part of the evening and see to it 
 that you are snugly tucked away in bed at least some- 
 time before midnight. This "open all night" stunt is 
 just another evidence of how abnormal man has be- 
 come. We are certainly "going some" these days, but 
 we are headed straight for an early grave ; it's time to 
 put on the brakes. Remember this: most any fool 
 can run an automobile at high speed over rough roads 
 for a short while, but it isn't good for the machine, 
 nor can one negotiate such roads as well in the night 
 as in the daytime. 
 
 You may have to run your body over rough roads ; 
 if so, it needs all the more care that you may pull 
 it through without injury. This body is indeed a won- 
 derful machine, but the way some people run their 
 bodies it is really a mystery to me that they last as 
 long as they do. 
 
 If it's worth while to live one hundred years in 
 full possession of one's bodily powers and mental ac- 
 tivity, it's worth paying the price in obedience to na- 
 ture's laws at any rate, it's the only way that will 
 accomplish the trick, so you can pay your money and 
 take your choice.
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 From the standpoint of normal nature we have 
 become so abnormal that there are some questions of 
 fundamental and vital importance that have to do with 
 the very perpetuity of the race itself, that are now 
 considered indecent, improper, and "unmentionable." 
 
 Whenever the question of "sex" is raised in a mixed 
 audience, the old grannies throw up their hands in holy 
 horror, the middle-aged people look cold and unap- 
 provingly at you, and the young people blush and look 
 disturbed and silly. 
 
 You can talk on most any question but this one; 
 here you are supposed to hold your tongue and keep 
 whatever knowledge you possess, good or bad, to 
 yourself. 
 
 I want to say right here that this attitude of mind 
 is causing more trouble in the world than anything 
 else I can mention; it is the height of folly, and it is 
 time that sensible people refuse to hold their tongues
 
 132 HOW TO LIVE ONE HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 when the very heavens cry out against the evils of the 
 abnormal sex expression that is undermining the very 
 foundation of civic life and individual character. 
 
 I boldly maintain that the question of sex and the 
 propagation of the race is NOT an indecent question, 
 except in an indecent mind, that has become so per- 
 verted that it can not hold a pure thought. It is im- 
 portant that proper knowledge be no longer sup- 
 pressed, but that we come out boldly and call a spade 
 a spade. Men and women should discuss these ques- 
 tions rationally with each other and their children, that 
 the race may be governed by wisdom, and coming 
 generations saved from the folly and disease that 
 comes from the abuse of the sex functions. 
 
 The subject of sex is one that permeates all na- 
 ture. The neuter gender seems to be only a gram- 
 matical phrase, for wherever there is created life there 
 is sex in the animal, the vegetable, and its counter- 
 part even in the mineral world. 
 
 The purpose of nature in this matter, the propaga- 
 tion of the species, is of no less importance with re- 
 gard to man than it is with regard to animals and 
 vegetables, and yet our government spends hundreds 
 of thousands of dollars yearly studying the question 
 of the sex and breeding of hogs, and not a penny in 
 trying to discover how to raise a noble specimen of 
 manhood. 
 
 Should a chicken or a calf break out with some 
 vile or dangerous disease, the government sends a 
 dozen experts to study into the matter and try to de- 
 vise a remedy. But the human race is affected by a 
 score of vile and body-destroying diseases that come
 
 THE LAWS OF SEX 133 
 
 from the lack of knowledge of the proper functions 
 of sex, and not a penny is spent in any systematic 
 effort on the part of the people's representatives to 
 find and eradicate the causes and get rid of the ef- 
 fects. The victims are left to the tender mercies of 
 patent-medicine venders and quacks, not to mention 
 the "regular" practicing physicians, who make a great 
 part of their money in this way. There is no other 
 class of disease where the victim pays so liberally for 
 relief and gets so little. 
 
 Admitted that the question is not an easy one to 
 handle, this does not prove that no attempt should 
 be made, and that helpful knowledge should be with- 
 held, especially from the children, who contract all 
 manner of wrong sex habits through ignorance, and 
 through the harmful example and teaching of other 
 children and grown people equally ignorant. 
 
 Admitted that if right knowledge was given out 
 many would not follow it, still it would act as a check, 
 and in the course of time right teaching will be fol- 
 lowed by right acting. It could hardly be expected 
 that a matter that has been permitted to grow into 
 such grave and dangerous proportions is to be imme- 
 diately brought back into right channels. 
 
 The start should be made with the children, who 
 should be taught in the public schools the functions of 
 sex and the danger of abusing the sex organs, and 
 they should be taught this at a very early age, as early 
 as the abuses commence to be manifested. The most 
 careful text-books should be prepared and if necessary, 
 special teachers employed who are capable of giving 
 the proper knowledge on this most proper subject.
 
 134 HOW TO LIVE ONE HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 I once listened to a man who was lecturing under 
 the auspices of "The League for Medical Freedom." 
 I was much in sympathy with some of the purposes of 
 the league, had even subscribed my name as a pros- 
 pective member. After I heard this man, who was a 
 high-up official in the movement, I was thoroughly 
 disgusted. The greater part of his talk was taken up 
 trying to prove that the movement to teach sex hy- 
 giene in the public schools is dangerous, and that such 
 knowledge should be given children only by their par- 
 ents. 
 
 Admitting that it would be desirable for the par- 
 ents to give this knowledge, how are parents to give 
 what they have not got. The parents of children are 
 as much in need of being taught as the children, and 
 the teachers should be given a chance to teach the 
 parents through the children, if they can't be reached 
 in any other manner, and in my judgment the text- 
 books should be so designed that the interest and co- 
 operation of the parents is also brought into action. 
 
 It could hardly be expected that in the brief space 
 at my command I could go into an exhaustive treat- 
 ment of this subject. There are numerous books that 
 are procurable that will give any person desiring same 
 the needed knowledge and warning regarding the sex 
 nature. I would feel, however, that the purpose of 
 these articles would not be subserved unless a few 
 fundamental principles were elucidated. 
 
 In the first place there seems to be but one purpose 
 of sex, as exemplified in nature, and that is the propa- 
 gation of the species. If you will study through the 
 animal kingdom, you will find that the sex functions
 
 THE LAWS OF SEX 135 
 
 are only brought into play for this specific reason, un- 
 less it is among the animals that have associated with 
 man. The domestic animals have been known to be- 
 come abnormal along sex lines, in fact they have been 
 taught by man to be abnormal. But with thousands 
 of years of abnormal breeding the chickens still aver- 
 age about as many roosters as hens, and the same is 
 true of other animals where one male serves a num- 
 ber of females. You can change the size, the color, 
 and the general form of the species ; you can develop 
 an animal or fowl that has no seeming resemblance to 
 its progenitors, but you can't change a fundamental 
 law of sex or even modify it, though you can pervert 
 its immediate expression. 
 
 This may be laid down as absolutely true : the sex 
 fluid is more important to the male organism than 
 many times its quantity in blood ; that it has its func- 
 tion in building the character of the boy and making 
 a man of him; it gives him the male voice and the 
 male courage and the male strength. The loss of this 
 fluid saps his very life energy and makes of him only 
 a "thing" that might have been a man. And it is for 
 this very reason, sex abuse, that we have so many 
 "things" and so few men ; and yet we are not saving 
 our boys or making one sensible concerted effort to 
 bring to them the knowledge that is of such very great 
 importance to them, individually and to the entire race. 
 
 Let it be said with shame to us as a race that the 
 practice of self-abuse at some time in life is almost 
 universal with both sexes, and has led to untold misery 
 and race deterioration. 
 
 One might live an otherwise model life, and
 
 136 HOW TO LIVE ONE HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 through this avenue of sex gratification tear down 
 the body and the mind and the character as well; in 
 fact, destroy all that is desirable in the human, that 
 distinguishes it above the other animals. In this way 
 the human animal descends, not to the plane of the 
 beast, which in nature is normal and right, but far 
 below the plane of the beast, for the depths of human 
 degradation take hold of hell itself. 
 
 The sex appetite once started becomes an abnor- 
 mal craving the same as the appetite for whisky or 
 morphine, though worse. The victim, for one is cer- 
 tainly a "victim" in the clutches of any abnormal ap- 
 petite, in this, as in all others, reasons with himself 
 that it is natural, and hence excusable and right ; thus 
 is the pathway to reform blocked and the pathway to 
 ruin made straight and wide. But with all his reason- 
 ing there is always the mental conviction that the 
 thing is not right, and hence the secrecy that attaches 
 to such matters. 
 
 Parents very often delude themselves into the be- 
 lief that their children are safe from these bad habits, 
 when at the very time their children's lives are being 
 ruined. The need of knowledge, absolute, specific, 
 strongly impressed knowledge, is universal ; no child 
 is safe without it, and not one in a thousand will es- 
 cape the cultivation of these harmful, life-sapping, 
 character-destroying habits unless they are saved from 
 them. Oh the shame of it, that we have made so little 
 effort to save the race right here at the fountain-head 
 of its very being! 
 
 Politics is supposed to be a "bad" question, though 
 why "the science of government" should be called bad
 
 THE LAWS OF SEX 
 
 137 
 
 The human trinity divine father, mother, child!
 
 138 HOW TO LIVE ONE HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 may probably be attributed to the fact that the so- 
 called "good" people allow the so-called "bad" people 
 to run things largely to suit themselves. Here "eter- 
 nal vigilance" is still the price of liberty. The dispo- 
 sition of good people to let bad conditions alone does 
 not help to make the bad conditions any better; and 
 the disposition of all the people to keep from an open 
 discussion of this sex question does not help the mat- 
 ter, but is a tacit acknowledgment that things are 
 either right as they are, or else that people do not care 
 whether they are right or not. 
 
 On this question, which is so rotten bad that poli- 
 tics smells sweet beside it, there seems to be a feeling 
 of hopelessness, that nothing can be done, that the 
 wrongs will continue in spite of any effort to check 
 them. This, in the humble judgment of the writer, is 
 a sad mistake, and it is directly contrary to logic and 
 fact. To allow people to remain ignorant of the nor- 
 mal functions of sex and the importance of obeying 
 nature's laws is certainly no way to help bring about 
 a better condition, and especially to withhold this 
 knowledge from the children borders on criminal neg- 
 lect. 
 
 There was a time when drinking alcoholic liquors 
 was an almost universal custom ; when every grocery 
 store sold whisky the same as it sold sugar; when 
 even the clergy had to make rules keeping its mem- 
 bers from overindulgence. Education has brought the 
 people to realize the injurious effects of alcohol on the 
 system, and has hastened the day when alcoholic drinks 
 will not be consumed by any one. Right now the 
 majority of the people are opposed to the manufacture
 
 THE LAWS OF SEX 139 
 
 and sale of such drinks, and even the victims are 
 longing to be free. 
 
 The sex abuses are more deeply rooted and more 
 harmful, making it the more important that the work 
 of education be started at once and pushed with vigor, 
 for the very life of the race is here at stake. 
 
 Even the marriage state today is little less than 
 legalized prostitution. The male forces his abnormal 
 attention on the female against every principle of 
 animal ethics. Women are slowly and painfully mur- 
 dered in this way, and the voice of protest is smoth- 
 ered in a "conventional modesty" that is false as hell. 
 
 How long it will take the race to cast aside its 
 prudery and face this grave question of normal sex 
 life, with courage and a determination to return to a 
 proper exercise of the sex functions, I do not know , 
 I only feel that the matter is of such grave importance 
 that no one who believes in right living can longer 
 keep silent. 
 
 I believe in boys and girls and men and women 
 associating together in the closest friendship and com- 
 radeship, and that the sex function should make the 
 men gallant, courteous, and the courageous protectors 
 of the women, and the women gracious and lovable. 
 And I believe and know that through the cultivation 
 of these higher feelings of friendship, love, and re- 
 spect, and close comradeship, the grosser appetites 
 will be retarded and a purer plane of expression be 
 reached. 
 
 I am convinced that woman should be given a 
 much broader freedom than she now enjoys and the 
 right and power to control her own body, and tnis
 
 140 HOW TO LIVE ONE HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 means economic independence from man, who has 
 degraded her to his wishes because of his economic 
 power over her. The complete enfranchisement of the 
 women is the first step, but there are many others that 
 must be taken before the race reaches any right plane 
 of expression on this very important phase of being. 
 
 I would like to say more, but having already said 
 more than enough to everlastingly damn me in the 
 eyes of the prudes, perhaps it is well that I desist be- 
 fore they have me arrested for using "indecent lan- 
 guage" or on some other flimsy pretext that has been 
 employed to smother the voice of intelligent protest 
 against the wrong use of the sex organs. Thanks be, 
 there are a few voices howling in the wilderness, and 
 the light will yet dawn and men and women will walk 
 together in purity and more abundant life, and children 
 will be brought into the world who are the product 
 of love instead of lust. 
 
 NOTE. I am pleased to acknowledge that several 
 cities and some state health boards are taking up some 
 of these great questions in an educational way. The 
 Indiana State Board of Health, Indianapolis, Ind., has 
 published a pamphlet on "Social Hygiene vs. The Sex 
 Plagues" that is most commendable, and can be had 
 for a two-cent stamp for postage. Don't fail to send 
 for one or more.
 
 Suggestion; 
 <me NcwThot 
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 The failure of the old-line practitioners to cure 
 disease, or to even materially lessen its hold on the 
 bodies of men, has resulted in recent years in a general 
 distrust of the methods of the "doctor." This has 
 opened up a chance for new methods of treatment to 
 get a hearing, and not infrequently a chance to dem- 
 onstrate. 
 
 The old-line medical school instead of conquering 
 old diseases, is finding new ones all the time, and 
 "business continues to be pretty good, thank you," 
 even though thousands and hundreds of thousands of 
 people are really finding health in sane methods of 
 living, such as taught by Physical Culture and other 
 health publications, and by abstinence from medicines 
 and the exercise of the power of the mind over the 
 physical body. 
 
 The first break from the old school was Home- 
 opathy. Briefly, it works largely on the same basis, 
 only it believes in "small doses" of medicine, may 
 Allah be praised for even that concession from the 
 "dope fiends." 
 
 I have already tried to explain that the body is a
 
 142 HOW TO LIVE ONE HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 machine, and that the machine must be taken care of 
 properly, otherwise it will suffer injury. The ma- 
 chine of steel and wood may suffer injury and has no 
 way to tell about it other than a squeak or a failure 
 to operate ; the physical body has a way to inform the 
 soul, the driver of the machine, that something is out 
 of order, and pain is the way. 
 
 There is never a pain in the body but that there is 
 some cause for the pain ; the pain is not the disease, it 
 is but the evidence of it, the voice of protest, so to 
 speak. For centuries the "doctors" have been trying 
 to stifle pain. In this they are the worst opponents of 
 "free speech" the world has ever known. 
 
 A large dose of morphine will put the body out of 
 pain forever, a small one will silence this voice of pro- 
 test, but morphine is a poison to the human machine 
 and will never eradicate the cause of pain, and should 
 never be taken ; and yet it is one of the "doctors' " pet 
 remedies. 
 
 Many quacks have built up great reputations on 
 their ability to immediately stifle pain, the voice of 
 protest. As. soon as the body gets free from the ef- 
 fects of the "drugs" that have been administered, pain 
 again speaks and tries to tell the soul that something 
 is wrong, and the dear "doctor" is again called in to 
 smother this pleading voice of nature that is trying its 
 best to save the body from permanent injury or de- 
 struction. 
 
 Get this : when men and women learn to live right, 
 they will cease to suffer from bodily pain, and not 
 before. 
 
 One might also "deny" pain and succeed in psy-
 
 MIND AND WILL-POWER 143 
 
 chologizing one's body to the extent that the voice of 
 pain could not be heard, but even that, while it has 
 its advantages in that no villainous poisons are in- 
 jected into the system, still has its disadvantage in 
 that it borders on insanity, in fact is a mild species 
 of mental disorder. While great results are seemingly 
 accomplished through mental suggestion alone, it is 
 not the rational or sensible method of getting the body 
 rid of its physical disorders. These troubles are real, 
 and have their cause in wrong living and disobedience 
 of the great fundamental laws of our physical being. 
 If pain tells you that your body is ill, listen to its 
 voice of protest and at once try to find out why it is 
 ill. Here is the proper function of the mind ; through 
 your reasoning faculties you may be able to discover 
 the cause of your trouble, though this is not always 
 possible. Even though you are not able to definitely 
 locate just what particular thing you have done to 
 cause your distressed, dis-eased, un-easy state of body, 
 your mind, if permitted to act normally, will at least 
 reach the conclusion that you have done something 
 sometime. The system may not enter its protest until 
 some time after the cause, which may be cumulative, 
 for you now know of the wonderful "surplus energy" 
 that the body stores, and how it draws from this, and 
 so the absolute location of the specific cause may not 
 be possible. But here again "mind" can help you, for 
 you can figure it out to a certainty that the pain in 
 your body is the result of either some accident having 
 happened to mutilate some part of the body, or else 
 because of some improper foreign matter that can't 
 be eliminated, or else because of an overworked and
 
 144 HOW TO LIVE ONE HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 tired-out state that has permitted nature's destructive 
 principles to gain the mastery over the constructive 
 principles of the body itself. 
 
 And be it known that these destructive prin- 
 ciples are ever at hand in the form of disease germs, 
 and that any body that is not kept tuned up to the 
 proper health key is apt at any time to be subject to 
 their attack. If the body has sufficient vitality, it will 
 repel these disease germs without any harm to itself ; 
 not a day passes but that we take in enough germs to 
 kill an army provided that army is in such a weak- 
 ened state of physical resistance that the men's bodies 
 could not repel these invisible hosts. 
 
 In a depleted state of physical health the germs 
 find an easy lodging-place, and a battle royal is the 
 result. Sometimes the germs win, and then the body 
 is dead ; sometimes the body wins, and the germs are 
 cast out, and then some "doctor" usually gets the 
 credit, though he deserves none at all unless he has 
 helped to build up the resisting powers of the body by 
 sensible advice as to food, breathing, etc., which he sel- 
 dom does. 
 
 Now listen again : germs will never find a lodging- 
 place in a perfectly healthy body, unless that body is 
 inoculated by direct contact or by vaccination, or some 
 such process, and even then the bodily resistance being 
 normal, the battle is usually one of short duration. 
 
 The body that is not in perfect health is always 
 subject to disease germs; they find in the body the 
 very food on which they thrive in the form of refuse 
 that the physical organs have not been able to elimi- 
 nate.
 
 MIND AND WILL-POWER 145 
 
 Now use the mind again and it will tell you that if 
 germs are cast out of a healthy body without harm, 
 and find lodging in the unexcreted refuse of a weak- 
 ened body, that the thing to do first, when the body 
 gets diseased, is to get rid of all refuse in the body. 
 To do this "granny" used to give us a dose of castor 
 oil or epsom salts, and she had the right idea, though 
 her method of accomplishing it could be better served 
 today by the water enema. 
 
 But granny's remedy did not go far enough, it only 
 eliminated part of the waste matter in the intestines 
 and colon, while every organ of the body needed 
 cleansing. Here the fast is the only sensible solution, 
 and it is nature's solution. Just as soon as you get 
 sick nature tries her best to have you stop eating 
 by taking away your appetite, and then the dear 
 doctors come along and stuff you full of drugs, and 
 your friends do their best to tempt you to eat in 
 spite of the fact that you ought not to take a thing, 
 thus giving your system a chance to clean itself out, 
 as it will readily do if you just stop insulting it with 
 food that it does not want. 
 
 The right function of the mind is to treat the body 
 rationally, to discover its troubles and to eliminate 
 the cause and give the body a chance to eliminate 
 the effects. Here is a chance to exercise the will-power 
 and refrain from things that have been found to be 
 harmful, to correct bad habits and appetites, and live 
 normally. 
 
 Here again, through auto-suggestion, is a chance 
 for the mind to "suggest" to the body helpful thoughts, 
 and give the body intelligent advice and direction.
 
 146 HOW TO LIVE ONE HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 The mind has a great power over the body. The 
 mind can kill the body instantly if it so chooses. The 
 mind can make the body sick by unhealthful sugges- 
 tion, and make it well by healthful suggestion in line 
 with the laws of the physical organism. 
 
 The mind can do wonderful things, but there is a 
 limit to the power of the mind over this physical body, 
 and if the mind does not work normally and discover 
 the proper laws that affect the body in which it lives, 
 or if it disregards these laws wilfully or ignorantly, 
 the body sooner or later will suffer. 
 
 You can not disobey natural laws without paying 
 the penalty in pain, disease, ill health, and eventually 
 in death itself. 
 
 Live right and, barring accident, you may surely 
 live a hundred years, and more ; disobey the law and 
 you will die young in spite of all the doctors in Chris- 
 tendom, and in spite of all the mental denials you make 
 that you are not sick and that only your "mortal 
 mind" is in distress. 
 
 Just in plain English language, let's quit our fool- 
 ishness and through the mind learn the laws that gov- 
 ern our physical organism on the earth plane and 
 through the will-power obey them.
 
 The olutiori of the 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 The normal animal in a normal environment func- 
 tions normally; it lives its life according to its kind, 
 eats its proper food, which nature supplies, and fights 
 its struggle for existence with the elements and with 
 its natural foes. 
 
 Not so man, who undoubtedly was once normal as 
 an animal, but who was endowed with certain powers 
 of mind that the other animals did not possess, and 
 that have resulted in a wonderful mental evolution 
 that has changed the environment and also affected the 
 body, advantageously in some respects as to its capa- 
 bilities, its deftness, its cleverness, but that has not 
 as yet generally bettered its health. 
 
 Primitive man lived in an entirely different environ- 
 ment from our present surroundings, an environment 
 that differed mostly in that it was a direct contact 
 with nature; he was out in the open air most of the 
 time, air that was uncontaminated by dust or smoke
 
 148 HOW TO LIVE ONE HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 or any of the foul odors that civilization is con- 
 stantly manufacturing; his body was free to move, 
 because unhampered by clothing; his entire existence 
 was one of physical activity, and we can logically con- 
 clude that most of this activity was of a healthful 
 nature. 
 
 This is not saying that many of the things that we 
 have today and that are the result of centuries of evo- 
 lution in the making and using of tools are not desir- 
 able. But here is the idea : civilized man has divorced 
 himself from nature, has put his feet in a leather 
 box and covered his body with clothing, has built 
 houses and shops, and is now living a "shut-in" life, 
 shut in from the healthful outdoor air and contact 
 with nature. And as a result, civilized man is living 
 on an average about thirty-five years, and is sick a 
 good deal of this time. 
 
 It is a sad commentary on the present age to say 
 that there are thousands of children born in city 
 slums who never see a spear of green grass, a flower 
 or a tree, and who only occasionally get a glimpse of 
 the blue sky through the dense clouds of city smoke. 
 These children are the victims of environment, which 
 moulds their young lives into ways of vice and crime, 
 and disease is a natural result of their enforced sepa- 
 ration from nature; even the savage of the forest 
 had a better chance in the struggle for existence than 
 they can ever hope to have. 
 
 To go to people in this situation and teach them 
 that they should breathe pure air and live normal hu- 
 man lives is to add insult to injury. And this is largely 
 true of millions of members of the working class who
 
 INDIVIDUAL VS. COLLECTIVE EFFORT 149 
 
 A plea for the innocent. These can not change their 
 environment, but it will change them.
 
 150 HOW TO LIVE ONE HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 are "sentenced for life" by the present industrial order 
 to live beneath the surface of the earth, or in foul- 
 smelling packing-house districts, or crowded in un- 
 sanitary factories, or in some way to spend their 
 lives in nerve-racking and body-destroying toil. 
 
 To tell a man he should eat "pure food" helps him 
 very little when his financial resources enable him to 
 procure only the cheapest kind of food, and most of 
 this adulterated with something cheaper. 
 
 The individual must ever be largely controlled by 
 his environment, which will unquestionably tend to 
 mould his life into certain restricted channels of oc- 
 cupation, and limit his mental horizon to a sphere not 
 much greater than this physical limitations. The man 
 whose life from early childhood consists in getting 
 up early in the morning and going to work, tending a 
 machine, all day until physically exhausted, and going 
 home for food and sleep, to enable him to get up again 
 in the morning and go to work, can not be said to live 
 at all; he merely exists for the purpose of exploita- 
 tion. 
 
 Should he cultivate habits that are vile, should he 
 drink and chew and smoke and swear and be bestial, 
 who is to blame? Has not his environment been a 
 hotbed for the development of abnormal habits and 
 appetites that logically go with an abnormal life? 
 
 My little message, "How to Live a Hundred 
 Years," will never penetrate into the depths and reach 
 the victims of our present industrial order, not at least 
 as long as they are "the victims," though the day of 
 freedom has been hearalded and the writing is on the 
 wall. No civilization is worthy of the name that pays
 
 INDIVIDUAL VS. COLLECTIVE EFFORT 151 
 
 so little attention to the safeguarding of the life of 
 its citizenship as ours, nor can an industrial system 
 that fairly reeks with wrongs to those who toil, per- 
 petuate itself indefinitely, even though millions of the 
 workers are crushed beneath the point of resistance and 
 accept without protest whatever they can get to keep 
 body and soul together. 
 
 Could I personally go to each victim of Mammon 
 and teach him that by right living he could live one 
 hundred years (the task would be indeed a stupendous 
 one), after a conviction had been secured, few would 
 care to prolong their miserable existence even one 
 hundred days. 
 
 Life has become a burden to millions of people 
 under the present capitalistic regime, so much so that 
 many thousands end it. The papers are full of ac- 
 counts of suicide, though scientists tell us that the 
 "love of life is the strongest passion of the race." 
 
 In spite of the fact that occasionally some soul 
 wiggles its way up through the muck and filth of a hos- 
 tile environment, the natural law is that the majority 
 will be subjugated by the environment. Individual 
 man is largely the creature of his environment; it is 
 collective man only who is the creator of environment. 
 
 It is collective man who has created the city and its 
 slums, the workshops, the mills, and the mines. It is 
 collective man who has created the political state, and 
 the industrial system known today as capitalism, which 
 uses the political state as a means of enforcing its in- 
 dustrial regime. It is collective man who can change 
 what he has created or recreate anew a better indus- 
 trial state founded on broader principles, and taking
 
 152 HOW TO LIVE ONE HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 into account the mental, moral, and physical welfare 
 of all the component parts that go to make up the 
 whole, society. 
 
 Until such a state is established the average length 
 of years will undoubtedly keep on decreasing, even 
 though at the present time there are thousands who 
 are learning the secrets of how to live properly, and 
 adding many years to their individual lives. 
 
 In spite of a hostile environment, an environment 
 that should be changed by intelligent collective effort, 
 it is possible for many to save themselves from early 
 destruction, and eventually to save the race. 
 
 There is only one proper way to die, of a ripe old 
 age, like the ripe peach falls from the tree. Any 
 person who dies younger than one hundred years is 
 a victim either to the adverse environment of the age 
 in which we live, or else to ignorance, which may 
 easily result from a wrong environment. 
 
 For all that, having the knowledge that this little 
 book has given you, there is no longer any excuse 
 for you, as an individual, to continue to live in a way 
 that is destructive of your physical body. You may 
 not be able to undo all the wrongs of the past, but you 
 can at least stop murdering yourself and live right 
 from this on. You can easily add ten, twenty, or 
 forty years to your life by right living, even in the 
 midst of a hostile environment ; and you can do better 
 than that, you can become a definite factor in changing 
 that environment and helping not only to free your- 
 self but all mankind. 
 
 If this book has started you to thinking along the 
 line of "right living," it has served the purpose of the
 
 INDIVIDUAL VS. COLLECTIVE EFFORT 153 
 
 author. If you feel that you have received any benefit 
 from the ideas expressed herein, he will be greatly 
 pleased to have you pass them along to some person 
 whom you think may be interested. 
 
 If you should be induced to practice some of the 
 suggestions, such as the no-breakfast plan, raw food 
 diet, or fasting as hereinbefore explained, the author 
 will be very glad to have a personal letter from you 
 giving the results of your experiment, which experi- 
 ment should be sufficiently long to make it worthy of 
 the name. He will not promise to answer such letters, 
 which will not be necessary, but this information may 
 be later compiled so as to assist others in reaching a 
 logical conclusion as to the merits of the theories put 
 forth, which are briefly summarized as follows: 
 
 That we should return as much as possible to a 
 natural way of living, spending all the time we can 
 out in the open air and breathing copiously. That 
 we should sleep in the open, or at least with windows 
 wide open, even in the winter time. That we should 
 eat moderately, not over two meals a day, and that 
 fruit and nuts should be our main food instead of 
 meat. That uncooked food is better than cooked, and 
 that the appetite should not be pandered to. That 
 disease is a result of some cause, and that generally 
 the cause is in wrong methods of living. That the 
 removal of the cause is the first step in the cure of 
 disease, and that nature will do the rest if given an 
 opportunity to clean out the system, and that fasting 
 affords this opportunity, while medicine adds new 
 burdens and undesirable complications. That the peo- 
 ple must learn to take care of their own health, and
 
 154 HOW TO LIVE ONE HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 that the doctors' position in modern society is such 
 that it is against their economic interest to teach peo- 
 ple how to live free from disease, and they can not be 
 expected to destroy their own "business." That much 
 that is wrong exists in the environment and that the 
 environment can be changed by cooperative action. 
 Logically, the sensible thing to do, if you wish to 
 live one hundred years, is to start at once to live in 
 accordance with nature's laws, to be intellectually, 
 morally, and physically clean, both inside and out. 
 Next, to help to change the environment so that it 
 will be conducive to the highest unfoldment of all 
 the faculties of body, intellect, and soul, not of your- 
 self alone, but of every child born into this world 
 In this way shall we realize a broader individual life 
 and make possible the coming of the Brotherhood of 
 Man. 
 
 Has he money enough for an operation, or shall vie just 
 give him a dose of saltsf
 
 A FAIR WARNING 
 
 And now a warning! 
 
 When you commence to study into these new- 
 fangled health ideas, you will run into a vast network 
 of contradictions. One fellow will say one thing and 
 one another, and the "doctors" will consistently dis- 
 agree with them all, as they do with each other on 
 everything but the proper amount to charge for their 
 services. 
 
 One fadist will tell you to eat prunes, and another 
 that prunes are dangerous and that you should eat 
 asparagus, while others will lead you this way and that 
 on every point you take up. Listen to them all pa- 
 tiently and then do as you darn please. At least that's 
 the way the author regulates his mental apparatus. 
 
 In the last analysis each tub must stand on its own 
 bottom, even though it has the poor judgment to kick 
 the bottom out that it stands on. The best way to 
 know a thing is to make a personal demonstration of 
 it ; this thing of "trying it on the dog" may be safer, 
 but the poor dog can't tell you about his "inside feel- 
 ings," and even a dog has some rights that a human
 
 156 HOW TO LIVE ONE HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 being should respect. If you really want to know if 
 prunes are good food, try them for awhile. If you 
 have even the slightest suspicion that a raw food diet 
 will sustain human life successfully and vigorously, 
 give it a fair trial, a month is all I ask for this 
 experiment. 
 
 This does not mean that I would have you trying 
 all manner of experiments that are suggested. First 
 put them through the gauntlet of your reasoning 
 powers, search them, sift them, run them to earth, 
 but don't discard them until you have satisfied your- 
 self by reasonable investigation and analysis that they 
 are not worthy of your further consideration. 
 
 And in this connection do not forget that nearly all 
 the great discoveries and inventions have been laughed 
 at and ridiculed. Mathematicians figured it out to a 
 certainty that the steam engine could not propel any- 
 thing; religious teachers told us the world is flat, 
 while the "doctors" pronounced the man crazy who 
 first told them about the circulation of the blood. 
 
 A thing may seem to be very, very foolish, and 
 still be very, very true; the "foolishness" may.be in 
 your own mind. 
 
 It is not safe to turn down any new theory these 
 days, just because it is new. Listen patiently to the 
 fellow who has a new message and try and set aside 
 your preconceived notions and get his viewpoint; 
 it may be good, and it certainly won't hurt you to be 
 fair and open minded. 
 
 And when it comes to this question of right living, 
 do not forget that the "doctor" may not take to it 
 kindly for purely economic reasons, and again he may
 
 A FAIR WARNING 157 
 
 oppose it from Simon pure ignorance. Perhaps you 
 have been a good "customer," have regularly had your 
 aches and pains, and have called for his assistance to 
 fix up your old body and keep you in running order ; 
 and now you get the notion that you ought to keep 
 your own body in running order, that nature intended 
 it to run properly, and that by obeying certain simple 
 laws it will run properly, and you go and tell the dear 
 "doctor" about it; you need not be at all surprised if 
 he goes straight up in the air. I can picture him now 
 with hands raised in holy horror at your audacity, 
 and I can hear his warning that you are running the 
 gravest risks of doing yourself irreparable bodily in- 
 jury. And I can hear the tone of sarcasm in his 
 voice as he speaks of the "quacks" and "freaks" who 
 have no "professional knowledge" and who try to 
 "induce the unsophisticated to follow their brainless 
 paths that lead to ruin and to death." Mercy me! 
 
 As for what the "doctor" tells you, I wouldn't let 
 that worry me much ; not that I would not listen, but 
 after listening I'd use my think-box and analyze and 
 dissect his statements; and then I'd keep right on 
 seeking the road to health, which is not paved with 
 pills and medicine bottles, but which leads along 
 pleasant wooded fields and green pastures, out where 
 the fruit grows and the nuts cling on the stems, out 
 where the air is pure and the water is pure and 
 thoughts are pure and acts are clean and wholesome. 
 And when I found that road, I'd walk its pleasant 
 pathway past one hundred mile-stones, walk with head 
 erect and buoyant step well into the distance where 
 unseen hands beckon me to lay down the well-worn
 
 158 HOW TO LIVE ONE HUNDRED YEARS 
 
 body of physical matter and take up the new life in 
 that indestructible body not made of flesh, and on a 
 higher plane of vibratory manifestation. 
 
 Whether or no, dear reader, you believe in the 
 continuity of life in the astral world is a matter of 
 comparatively small importance, but that you should 
 believe in and have abundant life right here and now 
 is a matter of the utmost importance. Right living 
 not only means the extension of the years into a ripe 
 old age, but it means that every day will be full of 
 life, that the body will be the perfect tool of the mind, 
 obeying its wishes with power and reserve strength, 
 and that every task attempted will be carried through 
 to a successful completion. Through a strong, clean, 
 perfect body the mind can manifest the highest that 
 is in it. 
 
 And one good thing about this entire proposition 
 is that it don't cost you a penny to demonstrate the 
 truth, and to know from personal experiment whether 
 the road to Wellville lies along the pathway of copious 
 breathing, abstemious eating, fasting when ill, and 
 right thinking and acting. It will certainly cost you 
 much to disobey the laws of nature and be "made 
 whole''' by "doctoring," admitting this to be a possi- 
 bility. 
 
 I dream of an age when every man will be his own 
 doctor, his own lawyer, and his own judge. I may 
 be crazy, but for all that it is a pleasant dream, and I 
 shall ever strive to make it a reality.
 
 IN CONCLUSION 
 
 If you have enjoyed reading this book, you may 
 be interested in other works of the author. "Pa and 
 Young America" is an interesting series of dialogues 
 on economic topics between a bright boy and his fa- 
 ther, price 25 cents. "The Story of the Giants and 
 Their Tools," an account of the evolution of the tool 
 told in simple story form, price 15 cents. Both pam- 
 phlets are illustrated and paper bound. At this writing 
 the author has "The Story of the Great Gold Mine" 
 in manuscript. It will make a large book, at least 300 
 pages, and is an interesting account of how two peo- 
 ple found and used a mountain of gold. Other manu- 
 scripts are in course of preparation. If interested, 
 write for further information. 
 
 The Billy Goat is a monthly magazine by the author 
 at $1 the year, and has been designated by Jack Lon- 
 don as a "live wire." 
 
 THE LOCKWOOD PUBLISHING COMPANY, 
 KALAMAZOO, MICHIGAN.
 
 KAIAMAZOO
 
 A 000 552 463 2