stitution. One who was a student in Dr. Bryant's
office tells us, --

"The poet was puny and very delicate, and of a
painfully delicate nervous temperament. There seemed
little promise that he would survive the casualties of
early childhood. In after years, when he had become
famous, those who had been medical students with his
father when he was struggling for existence with the
odds very much against him delighted to tell of the
cold baths they were ordered to give the infant poet in
a spring near the house early mornings of the summer
months, continuing the treatment, in spite of the out-
cries and protestations of their patient, so late into the
autumn as sometimes to break the ice that skimmed the
surface." ¹

Shortly after he settled as a lawyer at Great
Barrington, he represented himself to a correspond-
ent as "wasted to a shadow by a complaint of the
lungs." This weakness of the chest, to which both
his father and sister had succumbed, led him soon
after his arrival in New York to discontinue the
use of tea, coffee, spices, and all stimulating condi-
ments; to eat sparingly of meat, and to take a great
deal of bodily exercise.

It is easy to persuade ourselves that he was
largely indebted for his ability to contend success-
fully with morbid hereditary tendencies, and for
his extraordinary vigor and longevity, to the atten-
tion he was thus compelled to give to the care of
his health in early life. It is an extraordinary fact

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