How to Add Ten Years to your Life and to Double Its Satisfactions

About this book

This work is a self‑help guide that blends practical hygiene advice with the rhetoric of early‑20th‑century physical‑education teaching. It opens with a lyrical appeal to rise with the birds, stretch like a herd, and inhale the morning air, then moves into a series of numbered chapters that promise a “short programme” of exercises, explanations of health “secrets,” and daily habits for work, play, and sleep. The author, Samuel Silas Curry, a voice‑teacher affiliated with the Boston School of Expression, grounds his claims in personal anecdotes, citing the poet Bryant’s added decade of life and his own three‑men workload despite physicians’ warnings, while insisting that true benefit comes from mental and emotional discipline as much as bodily movement.

Curry’s voice is earnest, almost devotional, mixing poetic flourishes with the didactic tone of a lecture hall. The prose reflects the optimism and moral earnestness of the Progressive Era, peppered with references to classical poetry and a belief in the transformative power of disciplined routine. Readers who enjoy historical health manuals, early wellness literature, or the moral‑inspirational style of turn‑of‑the‑century educators will find this book’s blend of poetry, pedagogy, and practical exercise both intriguing and motivating.