you would all try the last simple exercise I illustrated, which, by the way, is one of the most valuable of all exercises for daily practice, and see how well you can do it. Remember, you must not bend the knees. There are doubtless many present who cannot come within a foot of the floor.

If you will drink two or three quarts of distilled water a day, and use it for cooking, for the next six months, most of you can easily do what I have done.

You may ask, "What good will it do?" It will do what it has done for me. It will make you stronger, healthier and more active, both physically and mentally; more flexible and elastic in body; it will improve your digestion and give you purer blood and a better circulation, consequently, a more active skin and a clearer, fresher complexion; it will eliminate the excess of earthy salts and mineral substances which makes young people old and old people stiff, rheumatic and helpless; and it will add many long years of health, happiness and activity to your lives. Is it not worth a trial?

All waters, except distilled, whether plain, filtered, boiled, pasteurized, or electrically treated, including all spring waters, are more or less impure and unwholesome for all drinking and cooking purposes. The purer the water the better for all uses, and, as proved from chemical analysis by the chief chemist of the Brooklyn Board of Health, and others, the double distilled water is the purest of all. It is also perfect in taste and appearance.

Distilled Water for Cooking.

The injurious effects of bad water are the same, whether taken into the system in the form of drink or in food.

For cooking, distilled water is a delightful luxury, as it gives a specially clean and delicate flavor to all foods and drinks prepared with it.

For health and longevity it is more important to use the purest water for the preparation of all foods and drinks by cooking or simple admixture than for drinking, for the reason that more water is usually taken into the system in that way. Distilled water has been freed from all animal, vegetable, mineral and gaseous substances by the modern processes of double distillation, and is odorless and colorless, as absolutely pure water always is. All foods and drinks prepared with it are superior in delicate quality and taste, as well as healthfulness. This is especially true of all breakfast cereals, tea, coffee, cocoa, chocolate, soups, meats, breads,

fruits and vegetables. The color, texture and keeping qualities of breads, fruit ices, etc., are noticeably improved by it, as has been repeatedly demonstrated by bakers and caterers who have tested it in comparison with other waters.

Water containing impurities has a defined taste produced by them, which is intensified in all articles made with or cooked in it just to the extent the water used in baking and cooking has been evaporated. The water which in cooking passes off as vapor, is pure, all impurities being left in the food. The pollutions in a gallon of water used in making bread, for example, will all be retained in about one quart left after baking, consequently, the bread will contain all the defilements of the original gallon, and the water left in it be four times as impure as before. The darker color and impaired taste imparted to foods by impure water are due to the bacteria and other animal and vegetable organisms with which it is packed. The greater coarseness of texture and harsher quality are owing to lime and other earthy salts and minerals. The quicker drying and shorter keeping properties of bread, etc., are due to the same causes.

All foods cook quicker and are made more tender in distilled water than in other waters, especially in those that contain much mineral matter, like the Ridgewood.

It is the great solvent property of distilled water that makes all foods cooked in it more delicate and tender, particularly when soaked in it for a time before cooking. The mineral substances contained in all other waters have the opposite effect.

The dead and decomposing animalcula and bacteria in city waters supply the germs of putrefaction that make the food stale and unfit for use much quicker than when prepared with an absolutely pure water, and certainly these millions of putrefying animal and vegetable bodies do not improve the appearance, taste, quality or healthfulness of food. Quite the contrary. In conclusion, I will say that this subject of the use of pure water is the most vitally important one that can engage the attention, not only of those who desire great length of days, but of all who wish to make their earth lives as healthy, happy and useful as possible, as a preparation for the better and higher life "beyond the veil."

SIR HENRY THOMPSON ON DIET.

Sir Henry Thompson, who until he relinquished active practice was the foremost genito-urinary surgeon in Great Britain and

worked contemporaneously with Bigelow, is now hale and hearty at the age of eighty-two. He is not only a great authority on his own branch of surgery, but also on dietetics. He also interests himself in the subject of cremation and is president of the English Cremation Society, whose objects he has done much to further with his pen. He has just published a remarkable book on "Diet in Relation to Health," in which his personal experience is a striking object lesson. Thirty years ago, at the age of fifty-two, he gave up alcohol. For the sake of experiment five or six years back he tried the effect of a claret glass of good wine at dinner every day for two months. Then the sick headaches and pains in the joints from which he had suffered in early life came back until he abstained again. Moreover, "after abandoning alcohol, the joints gradually lost their stiffness and ultimately became as supple and mobile as they were in youth, and continue absolutely so to this day." He adds: "It may be fairly said that one example

does not prove a case. But it is not a single example, and really designates a very large class of active men possessing a more or less similar temperament of which a type is here described." Half our bodily ills are due, he believes, to improper feeding. The necessity for diminishing the amount of nourishment taken as one grows older is not appreciated. "The extra glass of cordial, the superlatively strong extract of meat" are mistakes. Sir Henry draws an alarming picture of the head of the family sinking to decay because his affectionate spouse plies him with dainties he cannot digest-the egg whipped up with sherry, the insidious calves' foot jelly, the inopportune cup of cocoa. She urges him to try patent foods which are so "nutritious" that his stomach cannot stand them, and she imagines that even his drinks must have nutriment, forgetting that the primary object of drink is to satisfy thirst, and that to take milk, for example, with meat is one of the greatest dietic blunders that can be perpetrated. Even the dentist shares in his condemnation. He gives the patient a set of masticators as efficacious as the originals, but he does not warn the patient that the body needs less food than in the heyday of life. Though not a vegetarian, Sir Henry maintains that three-fourths of our food should be vegetable. This insures a lighter and more active brain. The light feeder, after his meal, has fresher wit and more cheerful temper. He does not snore in the armchair. Dyspepsia is unknown to him.

THE UTILITARIAN PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION AND

THEIR RELATION TO ALTRUISM.*

By R. S. GUERNSEY, of the New York Bar.

TAXATION AND THE TENEMENT HOUSE PROBLEM.

The tenement house system, that now prevails in large cities to such an extent as to thoroughly awaken humanitarians and alarm legislators, has grown up during the last half century. The demand for cheap rents is one of the chief causes of this system; convenient distance to centres of work and business, thus saving the time and expense of travel to the toilers, is another cause. We have already seen to what extent local assessments and taxation in cities affect the price of rents, which capitalists and investors must obtain or they will seek other investments than those that might judiciously, and would, be placed in improvements and buildings on and about real estate-and thus increase the supply of that necessity in cities.

The time and expense and annoyance of travel, and low rent as well as many other local conveniences, are constant and potent inducements to encourage crowding in tenement houses. The factory by day and the tenement by night is all the life of the toiler and his family, and is now the prospect of millions of people. They are divorced from the soil. They must live and work in rooms where the sun never enters. The air they breathe must reach them through dark passages and foul courts. Congestion of population has become such an evil that expansion has become mandatory, to ensure the physical and moral development of mankind that is due to the helpless and unfortunate. This applies to the congestion in business that is prevalent through commercial concentration, in dwelling places as well as in shops and factories.

Besides the better opportunities for obtaining employment in cities by the vast majority of any population, there are other facilities offered by the public protection of water, food, schools, police, parks, health, sanitation, law and order and security of individual rights and comforts that extend to the weakest and most lowly and provide opportunities for individual improvement for all conditions.

*Continued from Vol. xlvii, p. 301.

Among all these facilities for happiness the pre-eminence of New York City is such that no place or locality can successfully compete with anything found there except in the price of rents, which for all buildings are relatively excessive, and can be, and should be, made lower for those who must now dwell in tenement houses, or who choose to have comfortable homes convenient to their business.

It was under such conditions and circumstances that our cities were rapidly built up in the last quarter of the 19th century. The dawning of the 20th century shows us that much more is needed and demanded by this utilitarian age that is tempered by the enhanced feeling of the intelligent acknowledgment of the brotherhood of men, and need of their protection by appropriate legislation.

Since 1850 the population of the cities of the United States has increased tenfold, while the rural populations that live outside of towns and villages of between one thousand and four thousand inhabitants (being now five million) have only increased twofold, as shown by the census of 1900, there being about forty-three millions engaged in agriculture.

Tenement house regulation, by laws requiring the modes of healthful and safe building, and better sanitary surroundings in shops and factories, are the results that have been achieved from time to time. It now devolves upon us to provide remedies for similar conditions and to prevent the increase of similar evils in the future. How is this to be best done? Rapid transit is trying to help, but it is not the best way, nor the only one. It is only temporary. We must encourage the growth of more business and industrial centres and the building up of more homes that are demanded by the most populous and industrial classes of our city, state and nation.

We may have nuclei of dwelling places in the suburbs already, but we need more of them. The millions of human beings that are now crowded into tenement houses without proper light and air can be induced to take up better quarters. Rapid transit is not sufficient to do all this. The inducements must be low rent and conveniences to enable the family to retain as much of their wages for personal needs and gratifications as the tenement and flat house accommodations now allow. The East Side tenement house occupants do not now have to pay carfare to get to their places of work. That expense saved enables them to better provide for themselves and their families out of their wages. The locations of the factory and place of work are largely governed by their accessibility