THE NEW YORK PUBLA LIBRARY ASTOR, LENOX AND 1899. RECOMMENDATION BY GENERAL "REV. SIR, WASHINGTON. MOUNT VERNON, July 3d, 1799. "For your kind compliment" The IM66 MORTAL MENTOR," I beg you to accept my "best thanks. I have perused it with singular "satisfaction; and hesitate not to say, that it "is, in my opinion at least, an invaluable "compilation. I cannot but hope that a book "whose contents do such credit to its title, "will meet a generous patronage. cr 46 "Should that patronage equal my wishes, "With respect, I am, Rev. Sir, "Humble Servant, “GEORGE WASHINGTON. The Rea Mt. WEEMS.", THE GREAT ADDISON BESTOWS THE FOL- "CORNARO was of an infirm constitution till about forty, when, by obstinately persisting in the Rules recommended in this Book, he recovered a perfect state of health, insomuch, that at four-score he published this Treatise. He lived to give a fourth edition of it, and after having passed his hundredth year, died without pain or agony, like one who falls asleep. This Book is highly extolled by many eminent authors, and is written with such a spirit of cheerfulness and good sense, as are the natural concomitants of temperance and virtue." ROAMIN PUBLIC CONTENTS. III. A Letter from Sig. Lewis Cornaro, THE IMMORTAL MENTOR, &c. T is an unhappiness into which the IT people of this age are fallen, that luxury is become fafhonable and too generally preferred to frugality. Prodigality is now-a-days tricked up in the pompous titles of generofity and grandeur; whilst bleft frugality is too often branded as the badge of an avaricious and fordid spirit. THIS error has fo far feduced us, as to prevail on many to renounce a frugal way of living, though taught by nature, and to indulge thofe exceffes which ferve only to abridge the number of our days. We are grown old before we have been able to taste the pleafures of being young. And the time which ought to be the fummer of our lives is often the beginning of their winter. ОH unhappy Italy! Doeft thou not fee, that gluttony and excefs rob thee, every year, of more inhabitants than peftilence, war, and famine could have done? Thy true plagues, are thy numerous luxuries in which thy deluded citizens indulge themselves to an excess unworthy of the rational character, and utterly ruinous to their health. Put a ftop to this fatal abufe, for God's fake, for there is not, I am certain of it, a vice more abominable in the eyes of the divine Majefty, nor any more destructive. How many have I feen cut off, in the flower of their days by this unhappy custom of high feeding! How many excellent friends has gluttony deprived me of, |