"Life is not to live, but to be well."

HIS chapter, and indeed the whole of this appendix, may be considered nothing more or less than an apology for my favourite way of spending my summer outing.

Now there are no doubt thousands

who would gladly follow my example, and become for a portion of the year lady or gentlemen gipsies, did not circumstances over which they have no control raise insuperable barriers between them and a realisation of their wishes. For these I can only express my sorrow. On the other hand, I know there are many people who have both leisure and means at command, people who are perhaps bored with all ordinary ways of travelling for pleasure; people, mayhap, who suffer from debility of nerves, from indigestion, and from that disease of modern times we call ennui, which so often precedes a thorough break-up and a speedy march to the grave. It is for the benefit of these I write my appendix; it is to them I most cordially dedicate it.

There may be some who, having read thus far, may say to themselves:

"I feel tired and bored with the worry of the ordinary everyday method of travelling, rushing along in stuffy railway carriages, residing in crowded hotels, dwelling in hackneyed seaside towns, following in the wake of other travellers to Scotland or the Continent, over-eating and over-drinking; I feel tired of ball, concert, theatre, and at homes, tired of scandal, tired of the tinselled show and the business-like insincerity of society, and I really think I am not half well. And if ennui, as doctors say, does lead the way to the grave, I do begin to think I'm going there fast enough. I wonder if I am truly getting ill, or old, or something; and if a complete change would do me good?"

I would make answer thus :-

You may be getting ill, or you may be getting old, or both at once, for remember age is not to be reckoned by years, and nothing ages one sooner than boredom and ennui. But if there be any doubts in your mind as regards the state of your health, and seeing that ennui does not weaken any one organ more than another, but that its evil effects are manifested in a deterioration of every organ and portion of the body and tissues at once, let us consider for a moment what health really is.

It was Emerson, I think, who said, "Give me health and a day, and I will make the pomp of emperors

ridiculous."

There is a deal of truth underlying that sentence. To put it in my own homely way if a young man, or a middle-aged one either, while spending a day in the country, with the fresh breezes of heaven blowing

on his brow, with the larks a-quiver with song in the bright sunshine, and all nature rejoicing,-I tell you that if such an individual, not being a cripple, can pass a five-barred gate without an inclination to vault. over it, he cannot be in good health.

Will that scale suit you to measure your health against?

Nay, but to be more serious, let me quote the words of that prince of medical writers, the late lamented Sir Thomas Watson, Bart. :

"Health is represented in the natural or standard condition of the living body. It is not easy to express that condition in a few words, nor is it necessary. My wish is to be intelligible rather than scholastic, and I should puzzle myself as well as you, were I to attempt to lay down a strict and scientific definition of what is meant by the term 'health.' It is sufficient for our purpose to say that it implies freedom from pain and sickness; freedom also from all those changes in the natural fabric of the body, that endanger life or impede the easy and effectual exercise of the vital functions. It is plain that health does not signify any fixed and immutable condition of the body. The standard of health varies in different persons, according to age, sex, and original constitution; and in the same person even, from week to week or from day to day, within certain limits it may shift and librate. Neither does health necessarily imply the integrity of all the bodily organs. It is not incompatible with great and permanent alterations, nor even with the loss of parts that are not vital-as of an arm, a leg, If we can form and fix in our minds

or an eye.

a clear conception of the state of health, we shall have little difficulty in comprehending what is meant by disease, which consists in some deviation from that state--some uneasy or unnatural sensation of which the patient is aware; some embarrassment of function, perceptible by himself or by others; or some unsafe though hidden condition of which he may be unconscious; some mode, in short, of being, or of action, or of feeling different from those which are proper to health."

Can medicine restore the health of those who are threatened with a break-up, whose nerves are shaken, whose strength has been failing for some time past, when it seems to the sufferer-to quote the beautiful words of the Preacher-the days have already come when you find no pleasure in them; when you feel as if the light of the sun and the moon and the stars are darkened, that the silver cord is loosed, the golden. bowl is broken, and the pitcher broken at the fountain?

No, no, no! a thousand times no. Medicine, tonic or otherwise, never, alone, did, or could, cure the deadly ailment called ennui. You want newness of life, you want perfect obedience for a time to the rules of hygiene, and exercise above all.

Now I do not for a moment mean to say that caravanning is the very best form of exercise one can have. Take your own sort, the kind that best pleases you. But, for all that, experience leads me to maintain that no life separates a man more from his former self, or gives him a better chance of regeneration of the most complete kind, than that of the gentleman gipsy.

Take my own case as an example. I am what is called a spare man, though weighing eleven stone odd