The daily morning journal and courier., 1895-08-06
DIR. EDWARD BEECHER.
His own Explanation of His Longevity.
 From the Boston Advertiser

His own Explanation of His Longevity.
 [From the Boston Advertiser.
 The story of his life is most interest ing and is here given as quaintly rela- ted by him to friend who asked him to account for his remarkable physique at his time of life He said:
 T never smoked or chewed tobacco in my life, and never drank ardent spirits in any form, but loved exercise. Dur ing my residence in Yale college for four years as a student-beginning in 1S1S-I was engaged most of the time in athletic sports of some kind, and the re- suit was that I attained and retained g. very good degree of corporal health and vigor. At the end of my college course I became the principal of the Hartford Latin Grammar school. While there used to exercise very much by rowing on the little creek which runs into the Connecticut river So far as other ex- ercises were concerned, was better sat- isfied with pitching quoits than any thing else. In addition to this exercise was very ready at walking. my main principle being to keep my physical con- dition in full tone.
 T went from Hartford to New Haven, where for about year and half I was one of the tutors of the freshman class at Yale, and although it was not cus- tom for the students to exercise with the tutors, did not hesitate to invite them to join me in the game of quoits. There was a kind of tutorial dignity there and it was regarded as not exact ly the thing for a tutor to play with a student
 At this time I was much impressed with the conviction that it was no more a religious duty to cultivate the intel 1 lect, the heart of the affections, than to cultivate and perfect the corporeal pow CTS. The body is the temple of the Holy Ghost; what are called the higher pow CTS cannot be developed but through its organic healthy action.
 Just about at the end of my tutorial life was called to take charge of the Park Street Congregational church in Boston. My father, Lyman Beecher, at | that time was pastor of the Hanover | Street church in that city. The pecu- l liar opportunities of physical exercise which I had been accustomed to up tc | that time disappeared. There was
 however, placed by my father in his churchyard and in the back yard of the house in which he lived a system of ap. paratus for physical exercise, a part o1 which was an elevated horizontal bal and pair of parallel bars of medium | height and a ladder. Not only my fath. CT but myself performed the various ex. | ercises which were connected with that \ system of gymnastics, and when on g l Sunday we could not exercise publicly ! in the back yard or churchyard we wen | into the cellar and shoveled sand or cut wood and kept up our exercise in that way.
 After four years at Boston I wa.
 elected president of Illinois college ir Jacksonville, The care of the college
 required me to travel. visited all the
 important parts of the state for tn, l purpose of awakening an interest in tht
 subject of education and raising fund,
 for the college. I not only raised funds through that state, but in the east. IT travelling around I rode horseback very ! often, going sometimes as many a: l twenty or thirty miles day In the sad l de, and did much walking also
 Having remained in Jacksonville fol fourteen years, I returned to Boston al the call of the Salem church. There
 made the harbor my field of exercise.
 was near the north end of the city ane
 I frequently went out in boat In tht 1 harbor I found a wide field of exercise
 in sculling and rowing to East Boston
 which was then a solitary island witf
 one wooden house on it.
 From Boston I went to Galesburg H., and was pastor of the First Congre
 gational church. Here took my exer
 else mostly in my garden and in visi
 ting parishioners when they were sick
 Some of the latter lived two or three
 miles out of the town, and I ofter
 walked"