probably would not have sufficient powers of resistance to carry him over the crisis, to enable him to rally from the shock of the operation. The patient died in two days.

Life insurance is an important thing, but it is infinitely better to insure yourself against the thousand and one health emergencies, against disappointments and financial crises, by keeping the physical reserves up just as high as possible.

There is a tremendous difference between plus faculties and minus faculties, and health or lack of it makes a large part of this difference.

Obstacles which we could overcome easily when vigorously robust we hesitate to attack when we are physically weak. What seem like molehills to a man in vigorous health become mountains when his vitality is low. He shrinks before them, is cowed, because his physical standards are down. He cannot cope with his difficulties, because a discouraged soul in a depleted played-out body is in no condition to tackle a problem, an obstacle of any kind, or to bring success out of a failure.

Initiative, like courage, to which it is so closely related, is largely physical. Men and women with strong, vigorous initiative are usually strong and vigorous physically. They have confidence in themselves, which is at the root of initiative. They have a hopeful outlook upon life. They are not filled with the doubts and fears which dog the steps of the weak and discouraged.

What we are capable of accomplishing depends very largely upon what we think of ourselves, upon the estimate we put on our ability. When the physical thermometer is low, when the health needs bracing, courage and self.confidence wane, doubts arise, and ghosts of all sorts, worry, fear, and anxiety haunt us. These are the ghosts that paralyze initiative and cripple our efforts. Fear, the great human foe, is a child of a lowered, depleted vitality.

A good percentage of the joy of living, of enthusiasm in our undertakings is physical. How much more enthusiastic we are when we feel strong, robust, than when tired and run down.

Optimism itself is half physical; pessimism and low vitality go together. When one is perfectly normal physically, he is an optimist; when one is not normal he is often a pessimist.

"I can," means physical vigor; "I can't," means physical debility.

How many times have you wished, longed for more ability, the signal ability which you have seen others display? How many times have you regarded your possibilities as limited because you felt you were deficient in some important faculty? Perhaps you have made desperate efforts to build up some one quality or faculty which is weak, like your initiative, your courage, your stickto-it-ive-ness, or some other, yet with very little success. You probably never connected the

poor results you obtained with your physical condition.

Now, as a matter of fact, your success or failure depends in the first place on this. You can not only strengthen your deficient faculties, but you can also multiply and improve immeasurably all of your other mental faculties by just improving your health.

Here is where your power lies; here is the secret of your success, your destiny. I know of no such effective way of multiplying one's brain power, increasing one's efficiency and general ability as by the bracing up of the health, improving the physical condition.

How shall you do this? First of all by making sure that you are eating the kind and quantity of food that makes good pure blood. Our life output, our happiness, our success are all dependent upon the quality of the blood. The blood feeds every thought that passes through the brain, visits every one of the billions of cells of the body, which are dependent on it for sustenance.

If some chemist magician were to give you a prescription for a life elixir, a magic chemical mixture that would revolutionize your life, cure your ills, turn all your disappointments and failures into successes, that would increase your brain power wonderfully, double your efficiency and effectiveness and insure your happiness, wouldn't you be extremely careful in seeing that the prescription

was properly filled? Would you take a gamble upon what meant so much to you by going to a cheap, unreliable drug store to get the elixir prepared? Would you take the chances of getting adulterated or defective materials, thus ruining the effectiveness of the elixir? Of course you wouldn't. No one would be so foolish. No matter what the cost, you would select the purest chemicals that could be produced in the world. You would take no risk, run no chances, in the preparation of this marvel-working elixir.

Yet here is a real life elixir, your blood, in which lives all your possibilities, your future, your happiness, your destiny, and you seem quite indifferent as to the ingredients which go to make it. Everything, your life itself, depends upon its quality, and yet you are perhaps one of those who take without question all sorts of food material in cheap restaurants; who buy materials for the mixing of this magic elixir, in which all your future, your destiny, lives, from cheap provision dealers; who eat meats which may be diseased, vegetables and fruits which are soft and spongy and beginning to decay, poor quality of bread, stale eggs, and who drink adulterated coffee and tea, and milk which is full of germs.

Few people back up their brain, their ability with the right food, material which will make pure blood and build up a vigorous body, nourish a strong brain. They do not eat regularly, and they

eat too much or too little. They take practically no exercise or recreation; they look upon play, all indoor games, and outdoor sports as waste of time, and then wonder why they don't feel well, and why they don't get on faster.

Now, if you are going to do big things you must take enough nourishing food to feed body and brain, plenty of pure milk and fresh eggs, good cereals, bread and butter, vegetables and fruit in abundance, and, if you are not a vegetarian, meat of good quality in moderation.

You must not over-eat or under-eat, and you must eat regularly. Your recreation, your play and exercise, must be in line with your amibition. Your sleeping habits must back up your eating and exercising, and you must never omit the daily bath,— the best you can get wherever you happen to be.

In short, if you expect to make the most of yourself, to draw out and utilize every bit of your possible ability, you must give yourself the same painstaking and scientific treatment you would give a valuable speed horse, which you were training to make a world record. If you are ambitious to make the work of your brain count, you must neglect nothing that will make you a first-class animal. Even the manner of partaking of food, whether bolting or properly masticating it, whether taking it with a cheerful mental attitude or the reverse, makes a tremendous difference in the quality of the blood.