Mr. Spectator, • I HAVE read your papers which relate to jealou'sy, and desire your advice in my case, which you ' will say is not common. I have a wife, of whose ' virtue I am not in the least doubtful; yet I cannot ⚫ be satisfied she loves me, which gives me as great ' uneasiness as being faulty the other way would do. • I know not whether I am not yet more miserable ⚫ than in that case, for she keeps possession of my heart, without the return of her's. I would desire ، your observations upon that temper in some women ، who will not condescend to convince their husbands ، of their innocence or their love, but are wholly ne، gligent of what reflections the poor men make upon ⚫ their conduct (so they cannot call it criminal,) when at the same time a little tenderness of behaviour, ، or regard to shew an inclination to please them, ، would make them entirely at ease. Do not such ، women deserve all the misinterpretation which they ، neglect to avoid? or are they not in the actual ، practice of guilt, who care not whether they are ، thought guilty or not? If my wife does the most ، ordinary thing, as visiting her sister, or taking the ، air with her mother, it is always carried with the ، air of a secret: then she will sometimes tell a thing ، of no consequence, as if it was only want of me، mory made her conceal it before; and this only ، to dally with my anxiety. I have complained to ، her of this behaviour in the gentlest terms imagin، able, and beseeched her not to use him, who desired ، only to live with her like an indulgent friend, as the ، most morose and unsociable husband in the world. ، It is no easy matter to describe our circumstance, ، but it is miserable with this aggravation, that it ، might be easily mended, and yet no remedy en، deavoured. She reads you, and there is a phrase ، or two in this letter which she will know came from ، me. If we enter into an explanation, which may ' tend to our future quiet by your means, you shall • have our joint thanks; in the mean time I am (as ' much as I can in this ambiguous condition be any ' thing,) Mr. Spectator, • Sir, Your humble servant." ، GIVE me leave to make you a present of a chas 'racter not yet described in your papers, which is 'that of a man who treats his friend with the same ' odd variety which a fantastical female tyrant prac'tises towards her lover. I have for some time had ' a friendship with one of those mercurial persons : ' the rogue I know loves me, yet takes advantage of my fondness for him to use me as he pleases. We ' are by turns the best friends and the greatest strangers imaginable; sometimes you would think us ' inseparable; at other times he avoids me for a ' long time, yet neither he nor I know why. When ' we meet next by chance, he is amazed he has not 'seen me, is impatient for an appointment the same ' evening; and when I expect he should have kept it, ' I have known him slip away to another place where ' he has sat reading the news, when there is no post; 'smoaking his pipe, which he seldom cares for; and 'staring about him in company with whom he has 'nothing to do, as if he wondered how he came there. That I may state my case to you the more fully, I shall transcribe some short minutes I have taken ' of him in my almanac since last spring; for you must 'know there are certain seasons in the year, accord ing to which, I will not say our friendship, but the ' enjoyment of it rises or falls. In March and April ' he was various as the weather; in May and part ' of June I found him the sprightliest best-humoured ' fellow in the world; in the dog-days he was much 6 upon the indolent; in September very agreeable ، ' but very busy; and since the glass fell last to changeable, he has made three appointments with ' me, and broke them every one. However, I have 'good hopes of him this winter, especially if you ' will lend me your assistance to reform him, which ' will be a great ease and pleasure to, October 9, 1711. • Sir, Your most humble servant.' T. No. CXCV. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 13. Νήπιοι, ἔδ ̓ ἴοασιν ὄσῳ πλέον ἤμιου παιτὸς. Fools, not to know that half exceeds the whole, HES. THERE is a story in the Arabian Nights Tales of a king who had long languished under an ill habit of body, and had taken abundance of remedies to no purpose. At length, says the fable, a physician cured him by the following method; he took an hollow ball of wood, and filled it with several drugs; after which he closed it up so artificially that nothing appeared. He likewise took a mall, and after having hollowed the handle and that part which strikes the ball, he inclosed in them several drugs after the same manner as in the ball itself. He then ordered the sultan, who was his patient, to exercise himself early in the morning with these rightly prepared instruments, until such time as he should sweat: when, as the story goes, the virtue of the medicaments perspiring through the wood, had so good an influence on the sultan's constitution, that they cured him of an indisposition which all the compositions he had taken inwardly had not been able to remove. This eastern allegory is finely contrived to shew us how beneficial bodily labour is to health, and that exercise is the most effectual physic. I have described in my hundred and fifteenth paper, from the general structure and mechanism of an human body, how absolutely necessary exercise is for its preservation: I shall in this place recommend another great preservative of health, which in many cases produces the same effects as exercise, and may in some measure supply its place, where opportunities of exercise are wanting. The preservative I am speaking of is temperance, which has those particular advantages above all other means of health, that it may be practised by all ranks and conditions, at any season, or in any place. It is a kind of regimen into which every man may put himself, without interruption to business, expence of money, or loss of time. If exercise throws off all superfluities, temperance prevents them; if exercise clears the vessels, temperance neither satiates nor overstrains them; if exercise raises proper ferments in the humours, and promotes the circulation of the blood, temperance gives nature her full play, and enables her to exert herself in all her force and vigour; if exercise dissipates a growing distemper, temperance starves it. Physic, for the most part, is nothing else but the substitute of exercise and temperance. Medicines are indeed absolutely necessary in acute distempers, that cannot wait the slow operations of these two great instruments of health; but did men live in an habitual course of exercise and temperance, there would be but little occasion for them. Accordingly we find that those parts of the world are the most healthy, where they subsist by the chace; and that men lived longest when their lives were employed in hunting, and when they had little food besides what they caught. Blistering, cupping, bleeding, are seldom of use but to the idle and intemperate; as all those inward applications which are so much in practice among us, are for the most part nothing else but expedients to make luxury consistent with health. The apothecary is perpetually employed in countermining the cook and the vintner. It is said of Diogenes, that meeting a young man who was going to a feast, he took him up in the street and carried him home to his friends, as one who was running into imminent danger, had he not prevented him. What would that philosopher have said, had he been present at the gluttony of a modern meal? Would not he have thought the master of the family mad, and have begged his servants to tie down his hands, had he seen him devour fowl, fish, and flesh: swallow oil and vinegar, wines and spices; throw down sallads of twenty different herbs, sauces of an hundred ingredients, confections and fruits of numberless sweets and flavours? What unnatural motions and counterferments must such a medley of intemperance produce in the body? For my part, when I behold a fashionable table set out in all its magnificence, I fancy that I see gouts and dropsies, fevers and lethargies, with other innumerable distempers, lying in ambuscade among the dishes. Nature delights in the most plain and simple diet. Every animal but man keeps to one dish. Herbs are the food of this species, fish of that, and flesh of a third. Man falls upon every thing that comes in his way, not the smallest fruit or excrescence of the earth, scarce a berry or a mushroom can escape him. It is impossible to lay down any determinate rule for temperance, because what is luxury in one may be temperance in another; but there are few that |