“So fares the system-building sage,
  Who, plodding on from youth to age,
  Has proved all other reasoners fools,
  And bound all Nature by his rules,—­
  So fares he in that dreadful hour
  When injured Truth exerts her power
  Some new phenomenon to raise,
  Which, bursting on his frighted gaze,
  From its proud summit to the ground,
  Proves the whole edifice unsound.” 
                    JAMES BEATTIE

The shouldering of a barrel of flour is a feat, by the way, which many an old inhabitant will tell you that he, or some friend of his, could accomplish in his eighteenth year.  Why it should always be among the res gestae temporis acti cannot be readily explained.  It is a common belief that any stout truckman can do the thing; but I have been assured by one of the leading truckmen of Boston, that there are not, probably, three individuals in the city who are equal to the accomplishment.

The mode of life that I had hitherto found essential to the keeping up of my strength was quite simple, and rather negative than positive.  From tobacco and all ardent spirits, including wine, I had to abstain as a matter of course.  Beer and all fermented liquors had also been ruled out.  Impure air must be avoided like poison.  Summer and winter I slept with my windows open.  Badly ventilated apartments were scrupulously shunned.  Cold bathing of the entire person was rarely practised oftener than once a week in cold weather or twice a week in warm weather.  A more frequent ablution seemed to over-stimulate the excretory functions of the skin, so that excessive bathing defeated its very object.  The “tranquil mind” must be preserved with little or no interruption.  Great physical strength cannot coexist with an unhappy, discontented temper.  You must be habitually cheerful, if you would be strong.  With regard to diet,—­that was the very experiment I was trying,—­the experiment, namely, of going without solid animal food.  With me it did not succeed.  So far from gaining in strength, hardly did I hold my own.  Suddenly I resolved to give up my vegetable diet, and return to beef-steaks, mutton-chops, and loins of veal.  A daily appreciable increase of strength was soon the consequence.  Within ten days I succeeded in shouldering the loaded barrel weighing two hundred and sixteen pounds; and a day or two after I shouldered, in the presence of our grocer himself, a barrel of flour.

I had now no further excuse for deferring my promised lecture.  The month of May had arrived.  My father delicately broached the subject of the announcement.  Being a little fractious, perhaps from some ebb in my strength, I hastily replied,—­

“Announce it for the 30th of May.”

“What hall shall I engage?”

“Any hall in Boston.  Why not the Music Hall?” I added, affecting a valor I was far from feeling; but, like Macbeth, I now realized that “returning were as tedious as go o’er.”