Perth Amboy Evening News

Some World's Great Men Won Success Partly Through Their Plain Living.

Benjamin Franklin, who is famed for his discovery that lightning is electricity, and who introduced the American colonial postal system, and who furthermore, as will be remembered, served America at the court of France as minister plenipotentiary, was one of the leaders of early modern times in the study of nature and nature's laws, and not the least in domestic science. His first maxim was: "Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation." Even in his youth his mind was filled with schemes for self-regulation and guidance, and he set before him the task of acquiring the habitude of certain cardinal virtues based upon simple living and habits of thought.

His constant effort was to better the condition of mankind, and his methods were intensely practical, says the London Catering World.

Since the early times, simplicity of preaching, teaching and eating has been the great factor in the world's advancement. The great mass of mankind do not understand, nor care for, abstruse reasoning.

The record of the life of Abraham Lincoln is traced back to that time when he was seen sitting on a rail fence in one of America's small western villages with a law book in one hand and a piece of maize bread in the other. Abraham Lincoln was a man of simple habits, and his greatness was to no small extent dependent upon that early simplicity and goodness which gave strength to conscience, mind and body.

Frederick the Great fostered above all agriculture and the cultivation of fruits and vegetables. His endeavor to benefit his people was based upon the natural laws pertaining to their health and simple happiness. He recognized the fact, ever since clear to the minds of the leaders of the Germans, that the body is the basis and must be simple and completely nourished in order to perfect the soldier, statesman or the peasant.

Bismarck's great work had for its basis the recognition of the simple laws of nature. He followed them, and, as a result, there came about a new manhood and a new womanhood, first in Prussia and later in the empire.

Bismarck's natural and acquired astuteness taught him, as a similar perception and reasoning had taught Frederick the Great, that political economy, rural economy and domestic economy are, as sciences, closely interlinked and interdependent in their relations to the state.

While in France as United States minister Thomas Jefferson wrote respecting the education of a daughter who was with him in Paris: "Of domestic economy she can learn nothing here, yet she must learn it somewhere, as it is of more solid value than anything else." To his friend Peter Carr he said: "A strong body makes a strong mind." Jefferson practiced his preaching by subsisting mainly upon simple natural foods, and he labored zealously all through his busy life for the upbuilding of an American system of education which should teach men how to live in accordance with the laws of nature. He died at the age of eighty-four, and he had not lost a tooth, nor was one of them defective.

It will be recollected that the laws of Moses are replete with instructions regarding the care of the body in sanitation and in diet, as well as in fasting and religious duties. It is due to these laws that the health of the Jews wherever in reasonable conditions is so universally superior to that of the average of other peoples.