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37

Conclusion

Many of my friends have asked me to record a note as to what I consider to be the secret of health and longevity. I am now on the wrong side of seventy-five, but I enjoy fairly good health, and my mental agility remains unimpaired. They say that my experience would prove useful.

I have endeavoured in life to carry out the principle that the preservation of health is our first and foremost duty; everything else depends upon it. The machine must be kept fit and in a high degree of efficiency before it can do its work properly. Our best men, with a few exceptions, have nearly all died early, Ram Mohun Roy, Keshub Chunder Sen, Kristo Das Pal, Ram Gopal Ghose, and others died in the prime of life. They exemplified the old Latin proverb: 'Those whom the gods love die young.' What a gain it would have been, if they had been spared longer to guide and lead their countrymen with their ripe judgment and experience.

The first and essential condition of good health, to my mind, is regular exercise at stated times. It should be moderate and given up as soon as one feels a sense of hilarity. Excess is to be avoided and is bound to do harm. The physical system accustoms itself to respond to the muscular rhythm that nature feels as the result of regular exercise. Throughout life, and even now, I take half-an-hour's exercise in the morning upon an empty stomach, and forty minutes' in the afternoon after tea. The latter I have sometimes to give up on account of public engagements, but I must have this exercise before dinner. Walking, in my opinion, is the best form of exercise. I used to add to it dumb-bells and Indian clubs in my early days. To take exercise early in the morning before a meal is the Indian practice, and I find that Miss Harriet Martineau recommends it. Almost equally essential is the habit of orderly and regular living. I am sorry to have to say that our countrymen do not always realize its importance. Their hours of meal and sleep are not always fixed, and they hardly recognize that the body is a machine, working with orderly precision, whose wants must be carefully attended