But whether this suggestion finds favor or not, we have always to bear in mind that "plain living" is the necessary companion of "high thinking"-- the lowly earth-born twin who waits upon her heavenly sister.
On the vexed question of the use of alcohol there was but one point on which there was a consensus of opinion in the discussion by our leading medical men, which appeared some years ago in the pages of the _Contemporary Review_.

The point upon which they were all agreed was that alcohol is injurious to children, and if the boy has been accustomed from his early youth to do without it, and, as he grows up, remains a total abstainer, there is no question that his abstinence will prove a great safeguard; though I cannot go as far as some of my abstaining friends, who seem to regard the use of alcohol as the root of what must, in the nature of things, be one of the strongest primal passions of human nature, and therefore liable to abuse, whether men are total abstainers or not.

Anyhow, though a lad can be trained to strict moderation, abstinence in both alcohol and tobacco must after a time come of the lad's own free will; the last thing that answers is to multiply and enforce restrictions; the rebound is inevitable and often fatal.

But I do say that where there is a great pinching in the home in order to afford the educational advantages of school and university, it does show some radical defect in the training of our boys that they should indulge in such expensive habits, especially the expensive and wholly unnecessary habit of smoking, when the dear mother and young sisters are doing without many a little home comfort in order to meet the expense of the young rascal's education.

One rich old grandmother whom I met abroad promised each of her grandsons fifty pounds if they would give up smoking; and it was marvellous how that stern necessity of doing as other young men do disappeared like their own tobacco smoke before the promise of that fifty pounds for their own pockets! They were all able to claim it one after the other.