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158 life, old age may be rendered cheerful and lovely. Nature has made a due provision for all circumstances, and provided the sustaining nutrition for advanced age. This was accomplished in the "change of life;" and, as we before remarked, nothing but its premature exhaustion can render declining life painful. What different ideas are suggested to the mind on meeting with an elderly person whose gentle life is the centre of a family's tender care and affection, blessed and cherished by the circle of her friends; or to see a woman still in middle age, bed-ridden, anxious, desponding, and wretched; oppressed by the recollection of her early habits, when, by irrational dressing, her lungs were deprived of their proper supply of air, the stomach was compressed, and digestion and circulation im­peded; and now to mark the result in the debilitated constitution which is broken down with suffering, is a contrast as great and as painful as it is possible to meet with.

It is difficult to convey in writing a proper idea of what we can do for sufferers of this kind. Cases vary so much that no general principles, except those already laid down in preceding chapters, can ever be applied. But of our success thousands of witnesses are now living. Many who were confined