The Chautauquan, Vol. 03, January 1883 / A Monthly Magazine Devoted to the Promotion of True Culture. / Organ of the Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle

by Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle; Chautauqua Institution

III.

But now, or in the perfect time, we know

The joy returns while labor yet abides;

Life’s round and fair, and, delving deep below,

We find the joy that early pleasure hides.

—The Journal of Speculative Philosophy.

[DRIVING.]

There is now no branch of outdoor education of greater importance than that of an ability to “handle the ribbons.” Not a man or woman but would be ashamed to say that they were incompetent, if in fair health and strength, to pilot their own carriage. And yet, though so large a proportion of society can boast a smattering of the science, there is no pursuit in which perfection is proportionately so rarely attained.

The first requisite for a tyro is to learn to sit well, and so to acquire the proper scope for his own power over his horse.

The seat should be above, or at least on a level, with the horses’ heads, not below them; and it should, moreover, be so placed that the driver can use his legs and feet to restrain the pull of the horses if necessary, and that can not be done if the reins pull down over the splash-board into the driver’s lap.

Though most tyros begin their essay with a horse in a single harness, yet in a general way it is easier and safer to drive a pair than one. If the single horse is perfect in manners, all that has to be learned is to keep him straight, and to direct him without collision. But if a horse has faults he is safer with a companion; though if the two have coincident faults, or could confabulate mischief together, they would be more dangerous than a single animal, yet it is in practice long chances against the two both doing wrong simultaneously. Each is a check on his fellow: the one may not want to bolt when the other does, or if one falls the other will probably keep his legs.

The tyro should take his seat uprightly and squarely, plant his feet well in front of him, grasp his reins firmly, and let his left arm play lightly from the shoulder (not the elbow), his elbows both well squared. Nothing looks so slovenly, or entails such waste of necessary power, as a slouching back, and hands sunk in the lap.

The whip should not always be used because it is handy; it is wanted to make a horse take hold of his collar if he shirks, and to feel his bit if he hangs back when there is difficulty in navigation. Unless he runs up to his bit there is little or no communication between him and his driver. The whip should be used from the wrist, not from the arm; a lash delivered from the shoulder is far less effective and much more ugly than a stroke from the wrist. A good fly-fisher never makes a bad whip in this respect.

Let the beginner commence by casting an eye over his harness; at first, rather that he may learn by inspection the place for everything and that everything is in its place; but later, when he has passed his apprenticeship, he should still do the same, and this time with a master’s eye, to see that nothing is wanting before he mounts to his seat. Let him note that the breeching, if in single harness, is neither so loose as to be useless, nor so tight as to hamper the action of the horse and to rub the hair off. Let him see that the rein is on the proper bar of the bit; else, if the horse has been accustomed to be driven from one bar, and his bitting is suddenly altered, his manners will probably change at the same time. If he is driving double harness, let him note the length of his traces, and see that his horses are properly “poled up,” else the carriage will overrun them down hill.

Having cast a careful glance round his harness, the driver will then proceed to mount.

Let him take the reins in his hand before he mounts the box, then, when seated, let the “near” or left hand rein pass between the forefinger and thumb, the “off” or right-hand rein between the fore and middle fingers—palm of the hand uppermost. Then let the grasp of all the fingers close tightly on the loop of the rein, which should pass out under the remaining fingers. Though the grasp should be tight the touch should be light; let not the exercise of the muscles of grip confuse the driver into adding to this a tug from his shoulder upon his horse’s mouth. However light a horse’s mouth is, or supposing he is a slug, that does not take his collar and run up to his bit, still the driver should always feel the mouth, else he has no control over him in sudden emergency if the reins are hanging loosely. There is more danger in driving a sluggish or dead-mouthed horse in a crowd than a free goer. The latter runs up to his bit at once, and so feels your orders; the slug does not feel, and may interpret a touch of the reins to direct him into an order to stop in the teeth of a Pickford’s van, or on a level railway crossing in sight of an express. Whipcord must keep a slug to his collar, and so to his bit, or the absence of constant communication between his mouth and his driver’s hand may lead to collisions.

And now in the seat, and the grasp of the reins first secured, let the tyro make a start; not in a hurry, not with an instant dose of whipcord—a word of encouragement to his horse should suffice at first. Let him learn to allow free room for his own wheels in turning corners or passing obstacles: he has got two things to provide for, his vehicle as well as the horse. Better give a wide margin at first than collide; though before long his eye will guide him, and he need not then make himself conspicuous as a greenhorn by giving too wide berths at corners and rencontres. Go steadily round a corner; remember there is such a thing as centrifugal force; and a two-wheel vehicle, high hung, may easily be upset to the outside by a hasty whisk round a sharp corner, even without the help of a bank to lift the inner wheel.

Then, as to the rule of the road. If he meets anything coming the opposite way, he must take it on his right hand; if he overtakes it, on his left; if he is overtaken he must keep to the left, and be passed on the right.

“The role of the road is a paradox quite,

For if you go right you go wrong, and if you go left you go right.”

Down hill he should progress carefully, especially when on two wheels, for then the extra weight of the cart hangs on the pad or saddle on the horse’s back. A stumble and fall will probably break the shafts, certainly cut the horse’s knees, and may pitch the occupant over the splash-board. Let him hold well in, sit well back, play firmly and lightly with his hand, ready to hold up sharply in event of a stumble. Even a sure-footed horse may make a false step from the pain of a loose, sharp-pointed bit of stone cutting his frog. A judicious and timely support from the rein may save the horse and preserve his balance, by thus suddenly shifting part of the weight of his head and neck on to the carriage itself.

Next to a powerful seat, the mouth of the horse and the lightness of the hand upon it are the requisites. “Half the value of a horse is in his mouth” is an old maxim. Few owners are aware how much “manners” depend upon the bitting and handling of a horse. Shifting the rein from one bar to another makes all the difference in the going of the horse. The mouth is the link of communication between him and his driver; the bit must control him without fretting him, and the touch of the hand, unless light, deadens its own injunctions.

As the whip progresses in his craft, he will note many other minor details, apart from mere safety, which conduce to the welfare of his horse and carriage also. Though he is bound by rules of road at rencontre, he may choose his own path when all is clear; he need not take his share of rolling into shape newly-laid stones, if a smoother passage presents itself. Even if he can not altogether avoid stones, he may yet ease the draught if he can manœuvre only one wheel on to a smooth surface.—Cassell’s Sports and Pastimes.

[EDUCATION FOR AND AGAINST CASTE.]

By W. T. HARRIS.

We often hear in our time the fear expressed that there is a danger in too much education, and especially in a too great extension of free education at the expense of tax-payers. “Where shall society obtain its hewers of wood and its drawers of water?” is asked in an anxious tone. “Education renders people unwilling to earn their living by hand labor alone, and they resort to crime rather than work at an honest trade.” Investigation, however, does not confirm these fears. We find, upon studying social science, that those states of the world that enforce universal education are by far the greatest wealth producers and accumulators of wealth.

The statistics of the seventeen states in our nation (the seventeen that kept statistics of illiteracy in jails and prisons in 1870), show that out of a total of 110,538 prisoners, 27,581, or 25 per cent. could not write, while only 3½ per cent. of the adults of those seventeen states were illiterate—that 3½ per cent. of the population, if illiterate, furnish as many criminals as 32 per cent. of the people, if able to read and write—or that the one who can not read and write is nine times as liable to get to prison as the one who can read and write. Of course we must remember that the education of the school is powerfully reinforced by the education of the family, the community, the State, and the Church, and that the school is not the only educational influence, nor the most potent one. We must not place a too high estimate on the phase of civilization that merely keeps men out of prison. Chinese education does that, although it does not produce scientific thinkers, a literature of freedom, or a people that worship the true God, or any god that allows man to participate in his being.

We shall learn this lesson again in studying the caste education of India. The duties of each person to members of his own caste and then to the members of the other castes form the chief staple of Hindoo education. There the hewers of wood and the drawers of water are effectually provided for, first by birth and then by education.

If we desire to behold the effects of caste-education made supreme over all others, we must look carefully into East Indian life, and interpret it by its laws, religion, and philosophy. The division of labor is necessary in order that men may gain the requisite skill to conquer nature. Food, clothing, and shelter are rendered necessary by nature—that is to say, by our bodies—and can be supplied only by nature—the mineral, vegetable, and animal realms. Besides food, clothing, and shelter, there is the fourth want, that of culture or spiritual direction, and the fifth want, or that of protection,—the realm of religious and scientific education, and the realm of the political government.

In India one caste is devoted to spiritual direction—the Brahmin, which reads and interprets the Vedas and gives counsel to the rulers of the state. Next is the Kshatrya, or warrior caste, that manage the secular or political government, with the counsel and advice of the Brahmins. Then the food, clothing, and shelter providers, who devote themselves to agriculture and the arts and trades of commerce, form a third caste, the Vaisyas; and lastly is the Sudra caste, which consists of day-laborers, or servants. The caste is determined by birth, not by the free choice of the individual, but by an accident of nature. For the East Indian the division of labor is the great divine fact of life. Brahma, the highest god, created the caste of Brahmins from his head, the warriors from his arms, the trades peoples from his loins, and the servants from his feet. Manu says that the first part of the name of a Brahmin ought to express sanctity; of a warrior power; of a merchant wealth; of a laborer contempt. The second part of the Brahmin’s name should express blessing; of a warrior protection; of a merchant means of subsistence; of a Sudra menial servitude.

Caste being of divine origin and imposed upon man, how shall it be preserved and transmitted? The answer is a perpetual education in the duties of one’s caste and in the abnegation of all that looks toward the recognition of identity of human nature and the equality of all in the substance of manhood. The greatest possible care is taken not to educate children beyond the position into which they are born and which has been occupied by their ancestors (if they belong to one of the regular castes). By marriage other castes are produced. The Hindoo must have for his first wife one of his own caste, and then he may take one more from each caste below him. Thus the Brahmin may have four wives, three being from the lower castes; the warrior may have three wives and the merchant two, while the Sudra can have only one. The children of the wives from the lower castes are classified according to a scheme invented by one of the kings, and there are more than thirty castes in all. The chandalas have for their vocation the removal of corpses, the execution of criminals, and such impure offices. General duties, common to all castes, are very few.

What is a virtue in one caste may be a sin in another. The duties are prescribed with such minuteness that a very complex system arises for each person, which must be obeyed in its smallest particular, under penalty of excommunication from one’s caste. The observances and formalities are more numerous with the higher castes. Hence even for the Brahmin, who is as a god to the other castes there is such a weight of formalities and observances that life is not worth living for him. He must perform tedious ceremonies of purification to remove the effect of the most casual accidents. Should he walk abroad and meet one of a lower caste, he must turn back and purify himself. If he should step over a rope to which a calf is tied, he must purify himself. If he should happen to look up and see the sun when setting, or at any time see it reflected in the water, he must purify himself. If he should chance to go out and get caught in a shower, he must purify himself; and so, too, if he happens to step on the wrong foot when he rises from bed. He must not look at his wife when she sneezes or gapes or eats. He must not step on a cotton seed, on a piece of broken crockery, or on ashes. When out in the sun he must look northward; when under the stars, southward; only when under a tree or a roof he may look in any direction. If he should fail to purify himself he will be excommunicated from his caste, and can be restored only by a painful ceremony.

The first, second, and third castes are of the twice-born, and they may hear the Vedas, but the Sudras must not read, nor hear read, those holy books. Burning hot oil poured into his ears was the penalty for breaking this law. If the Sudra were to speak evil of a Brahmin or warrior or merchant, the code of Manu decrees that a red-hot iron bar shall be thrust into his mouth.

There is more respect shown toward cows than toward the lowest caste of human beings. In fact, the Hindoo will not tread upon ants nor kill brute animals, but founds hospitals for sick or aged cows and monkeys, while he is entirely indifferent to the sufferings of a man from a lower caste.

The women, even of the highest caste, are treated like lower castes in spiritual things,—no woman is allowed to read the Vedas or to become learned. The children of whatever caste, too, may be sacrificed to the deities by their parents. A mother may throw her child, especially if it be a girl, into the Ganges, or any sacred river. The women are excluded from education, and are given in marriage in their seventh or eighth year. A woman who is discovered to possess a knowledge of reading and writing draws down upon her head the most severe condemnation. There is one exception to this in the dancing girls, and the bayaderes, who are purchased from poor parents for service at the temples. These are taught by the priests reading and writing, music, dancing, and singing, as well as the female arts of coquetry. They are dedicated to the gods, and do not learn housework.

Although the warrior caste and merchant caste may read the Vedas, they must do it under the supervision of the Brahmins.

Elementary instruction to the regenerated, or twice born, includes reading, writing, and arithmetic. The children learn to form letters on the sand first, and afterward on palm leaves with an iron pencil; at last with ink on plantain leaves. The monitorial system is practiced—one child hearing the other recite his lesson and assisting him to learn it. The Brahmin’s children are in all cases treated with partiality.

The chief branch of study in school is, of course, the Vedas, or holy books. This exercise must be approached with due ceremony—of girding with bands, purification, consecrated fires, and solemn ceremonies performed morning, noon, and night. The pupil must seize his teacher’s feet before he begins, and then read with clasped hands, and at the close of his reading again seize his master’s feet. This ceremony of greeting his teacher he performs by crossing his hands and taking his master’s right foot in his right hand and the left foot in his left hand.

Pupils generally reside with their teachers—in a sort of boarding-school—each teacher having the care of ten or twelve pupils. A very strict surveillance is kept up.

“Without his teacher the pupil must not enter a house nor look to the right or left, but bend his look to the ground as he follows behind his teacher.” “When reading the holy scriptures one must not cough nor take any food or drink. In blowing the nose one must not make too much noise—nor spit in a clean place—nor offer tea with his hand—he must hold his arm-sleeve before his mouth when he gapes—he must not smack his lips when he eats nor scratch his head.” Such directions are found in the educational code. We often find sublime moral duties intermingled with trivial details of ceremonial. If the pupil does not say “Om” on beginning and ending his reading of the Vedas, the exercise will do him no good.

The moral maxims are taught in the form of fables. The book used is what we know as the Fables of Bidpai (“Friend of Science”) from an Indian work, which was rewritten as the Hitopadesa (“Friendly Advice”) some centuries ago. It contains profound ethical wisdom, mixed with some things whimsical and absurd. Proverbs are quoted at every turn, being strung on the thread of the fable, like glittering stones on a necklace.

The instruction of the Brahmin’s son extended to the philosophic doctrines of Hindoo pantheism. To understand the nature of this pantheism is most important. There is Brahm—above all the individual gods. Brahm expresses pure abstraction from all distinctions—merely to think it is to become unconscious of all things. Brahma is the personification of that substance (Brahm) as the creator, Vishnu as the preserver, and Siva as the destroyer. Below these high gods there are terrestrial ones presided over by Indra, the Hindoo Jupiter, ruler of the sky. Creation is not an act of the will of deity, but a sort of emanation “like the growth of plants from seed or the hair from the head.” The world proceeds from nothingness, growing out of Brahma, and returns into nothingness—it is all an illusion, a sort of dream, which the Hindoo calls “Maya.” Brahm is the substance of all the gods, and of the beings of the world, and hence all their differences vanish to the Brahmin, who meditates long enough to reach the idea of Brahm. Hence the highest aim of education is to reach this annihilation of all distinction—passing beyond all the gods, even to Brahm.

The Sankhya philosophy expresses this doctrine of annihilation of all particular things and beings through reflection: “So through the study of principles the conclusive, incontrovertible, one only knowledge, is attained, that neither I am nor is aught mine, nor do I exist.”

One must not suppose that the Hindoo education is so complete that the lower castes remain without aspiration. They learn by degrees in what rests the power of the Brahmin to ascend above the gods by the exercise of meditation and abstraction. This is taught in the Bhagavad Gita—even a Sudra can by meditation come to Brahm.[H] The lower castes may become partakers of the divine life through regeneration—“immense self-denial, torture and penance” are requisite. They become “yogis,” and undertake some painful exercise, such as standing for twelve years without once lying down, then clasping the hands over the head for another twelve years; then a third grade by standing between four fires and the tropical sun, afterward swinging backward and forward over a fire for nearly four hours; lastly, if life is not extinct, being buried alive for the same length of time. If he lives still, the devotee has now become a Brahmin.

From the bondage of caste there is therefore one possible escape—through self-torture and penance,—but the remedy is as bad as the disease. It was Buddha who taught a doctrine that furnished a real relief from all this in the utter abolition of the caste system. Driven out of India, this doctrine spread throughout Ceylon, Farther India, China, Thibet, and among the Tartars of Siberia, and to this day numbers more human beings in its faith than any other form of religion. It gives all families a chance to ascend to the highest state of religious culture.

Buddhistic emancipation is from the rigid bonds of family as well as from caste. Any family having four sons must devote one to a monastic life. This demands the renunciation of all personal wishes and longings—all desires, all pride, and anger, and stubbornness; then the devotee reaches Nirvana and all will and consciousness have sunk into the rest and quiet of non-existence, and are purified of all finitude and special existence. In Nirvana ceases all change—no more beginning and ending—no more birth and death—perfect rest.

In the catechism of Chinese Buddhism there are ten duties prescribed: (1) Slay no living being; (2) steal not; (3) be chaste; (4) speak nothing wrong; (5) drink nothing intoxicating—these are also found in primitive Buddhism—another five duties are added relating to external rules of the order: (6) Do not perfume the hair on the top of the head, nor paint the body; (7) do not listen to songs nor attend the theater; (8) do not sit or lie on a large cushion or pillow; (9) do not eat except at meal-time; (10) do not own gold or silver, or anything of value as private property. The ideal is that of mendicancy—pious beggary.

Its ideal of the divine is no higher than that of India. God is conceived, not as a personal being having consciousness and will and love (our Christian conception), but rather as a being above personality and consciousness (the Hindoo conception). Hence the Buddhist still strives for the annihilation or extinction of his conscious individuality, just as the Indian devotee, but without those frightful penances, and without cruel laws of caste.

We can not commend the views of those who find in Buddhism, as portrayed in the “Light of Asia,” a doctrine almost or quite equal to Christianity. To us it seems to be infinitely below Christianity. Its conception of God and of God’s creation is just the opposite of the Christian conception, for in Christianity we believe God to be a personal being, who reveals himself in nature and man, and even becomes human in his Son, and dies on a cross out of love for the human race. Man can grow forever into the image of God, realizing that image in his will, his love, his intellect, because God is all there in an infinite degree, while to the Buddhist God is none of these but a being who is the negative of nature and of man too. Hence the education of Brahminism and Buddhism is based on an idea radically opposed to our own.

[CONTENT.]

By A. E. A.

Before the Wedding.

We stood upon the mountain top at eve—

Only we two; no other soul was nigh,

And watched the purple hills afar receive

Their last soft tinting from the evening sky.

The fading splendor shed a parting glow

On the faint mountains vanishing from sight,

And lit with one last gleam the lake below,

Ere it was shrouded in the gloom of night.

Through the hushed woods the silent darkness stole,

No living thing the sleeping echoes woke,

Save one late bird, unseen, whose wakeful soul

With ringing song the silence sweetly broke.

In that still hour so close our spirits drew;

We seemed alone in all the wide, dim earth;

I felt your strong arm clasp me, and I knew

The tender thought wherein the act had birth.

’Twas then I felt there was in that wide scene

Nothing so beautiful or so divine,

Nothing so sweet, the earth and heaven between,

As was the love that stirred my heart and thine.

The ancients were acquainted with the loadstone, but they only knew that it possessed the power of attracting iron, whether it was that they attached little value to a mere object of curiosity which led to nothing, or whether they had never examined this stone with sufficient care. A single experiment more would have taught them that it turns of itself toward the poles of the earth, and would have put into their hands the invaluable treasure of the mariner’s compass. They were on the very verge of this important discovery, but it escaped their notice; and if they had given a little more time to what appeared a useless curiosity, its hidden application would have been found out.—Fontenelle.

[ROUMANIAN PEASANTS AND THEIR SONGS.]

By C. F. KEARY.

A special interest, as it seems to me, belongs to every attempt to restore to a place in literature the genuine peasant speech of the Roumanians, with all its Slavisms undiluted, and showing by those Slavisms that it is not a sham peasant literature with the thoughts of educated men put into the language of a lower class. The task of contributing to this restoration has been undertaken by M. Ricard Torceanu. He has spent much time and labor in going from village to village to collect the songs, the customs, and lore of the peasants. Everything which he amassed was orally communicated to him. What he gained was often fragmentary and uncouth, but it had the advantage of being a genuine product. It would almost seem as if the villagers were beginning to forget their village songs. In a few years’ time, perhaps, these songs will be no longer to be heard, having been driven away by the new education code and by the new language which has been to a great extent substituted for the old tongue. Then these poems will remain like the last echoes of bygone days.

M. Torceanu has invented nothing, he has extenuated nothing. He has set down what he heard, and no more; he needs, therefore, to make no apology, although the poetry is often meagre and is always absolutely simple. In actual form these songs have some points of likeness to Mr. Barnes’s Dorset lays. In both the beat of four is much the most usual measure of the line; only that, owing to the difference in the accent, while in English the four-beat is often reached in only seven syllables, in the Roumanian eight are nearly always employed. A great variety of accentuation prevents the monotony which would naturally arise from the frequency of this form. And as this variety of accent can not be rendered in the English translation, more freedom has been used in the number of syllables contained in a line than is used in the original. At the same time the four-beat, when found in the original, has been generally preserved.

Alternate rhyme is the exception, the most usual thing being the couplet. Very frequently, however, four of five lines rhyme or sound together. These poets are not very particular about accurate rhyme. Untrained ears are never very exacting on this head. Our ballad literature could show countless instances of such assonance as wind, begin, him, them, am, man, etc. The Roumanians are much more liberal still—at least as appears to our ears. Some of their rhymes recall the loose assonance of old French poetry, such as the Chansons de Geste. Little distinction seems to be made between the liquids l and r, so that are and ale would pass for a proper rhyme. In singing each line is repeated twice, with a variety of accent.

The songs have one peculiarity: almost all begin with the words frunză verde, that is, green leaf. To this follows sometimes “of the so and so.” This reminds us of the beginnings of the snatches of rhyme in Mr. Browning’s “Fra Lippo Lippi”:

Flower o’ the clove,

All the Latin I construe is amo, I love.

Occasionally the frunză verde is followed on by the name of a flower unconnected with it by any conjunction. Thus the following song begins with a line which, literally translated, is simply “green leaf, three violets;” but to make it intelligible we will borrow the form from Mr. Browning’s songs.

The same phrase frunză verde is frequently introduced into the middle of the poem. One might be tempted to suppose that when it is found there, it has been the result of the welding together of two different songs. But there are some instances where this certainly has not been the case.

Now take for a specimen the following song, characteristic enough of the greater number of these village lays:

Green leaf, green leaf of the violet,

As of old, across the wold

And round my house the wind sobs yet,

Whispering longing and regret,

For the loved ones who have fled.

Breathes the wind among the grasses:

I faint with wishing as it passes.

Storm-gusts rise and fall again,

And passion wrings my heart with pain.

Breathes the wind, and small leaves move,

I die with longing for my love.

Over the mountain the mountain wind blows,

My longing for my kindred grows.

Blows the breeze the trees among,

My brothers’ names shall fill my song.

When it creeps the flowers through,

My sisters sweet I think of you.

Leaf o’ the maple branching fair,

What cloud comes here, the wanderer—

Hast thou told to her forsaken

How her love’s for a conscript taken?

Oh, little cloud, thou dost not carry

Rain or snow, but the tears of Marie.

Curious little conceits such as these, drawn from the common imagery of nature, are very characteristic of the poems. In that respect some of the songs resemble not a little some of the popular songs which one may hear in Italy, and resemble much less the popular songs of northern lands, wherein these conceits are more rare. Here is a still more simple fragment:

Green leaf of holly, all are gone,

The girls of the village, and I am alone.—

Not all; for one remains for me;

Only one my hope to be.

My hope but she;—

Frail as ice my trust will find her,

To the trysting who can bind her?

And here one which is far from ungraceful:

“Undo, my dear, the charm which you have made,

And let me now go free.”

“To make you go my charm was never laid,

But to make you marry me.”

The following might seem like an imitation of Shakspere; but it is a quite true rendering from the mouth of peasants to whom Shakspere was not even a name:

Green leaf of the poplar grove,

Tell me, prythee, whence comes love?

From the eyes or from the brows,

Or from the crimson lips?

Can a peasant taste thereof

As one honey sips?

This is the lament put into the mouth of a girl who has disgraced herself so far as to marry a tzigan (gipsy).

Swallows, swallows, little sisters—

Sisters, seek my mother dear;

Tell her from her daughter here,

That she send her kirtle red,

For a raven she has wed,

And a large thick veil for shroud

When the watch-dogs bark aloud.

Her brave dresses, that she take them,

Into one rude bundle make them,

Throw them in the street and burn them,

Utterly to ashes turn them.

Or here again a woman’s complaint:—

When the world despises me,

Only God has any pity.

Thou too, doubting, comest not near me,

Willst not know and willst not hear me.

Only one, my little dove,

Knew my sorrow, brought me love:

My sweet turtle dove, I know,

If her other half should go,

Would not mate with any other,

Or fly from one tree to another.

This is a more passionate vein, with some adumbrations of a story in it:—

“Hide, O God, the moon in a mist,

Let me revel as I list;

Wrap like a shroud his face in a cloud,

Till my lover has kissed and kissed.”—

“Green leaf of the vine’s long train,

I go, but in autumn shall come again.”—

“If you go for a month away,

Mad you’ll find me on your home-coming day;

If you go away for a year,

Not mad you’ll find me but laid on my bier.

Then to my grave I bid you come,

Scatter dust upon my tomb,

Take a look within

At the death of sin;

As I lie at your feet

And at Death’s deceit.”

Most of the poems collected are short ones, of a kind not dissimilar from the specimens given above. There are, however, some pieces which approach more nearly to the ballad form, which are considerably longer, and contain some sort of story. Our specimens would not be representative unless we included one poem of this kind. Let this ballad stand upon its own merits, merely as a representative one, without attempting to explain or apologize for its obscurities and want of harmony. The inequality of the metre here will represent the, to our ears, irregularity of the original:—

Over the mountain, bathed in the dew,

Is standing a little cottage new,

With windows that face the rising sun,

And door that leads toward the valley down.

In it was held a meeting gay

Of all the girls of the village one day.

And they sang and they spun,

And they laughed—all but one,

The hostess’ young daughter:

From her came no laughter

As from every other.

Then thus spake her mother:

“Little daughter, what fails thee?

What is it that ails thee?

Art thou sick, little daughter,

Or is it heart-pain?”

Said her daughter, “Refrain,

Little mother, seek not to know why

I am sad; lest I curse in reply.

For love’s pain I have proved;

I had once one beloved.

He was tall, little mother,

Fairer than any other.

His eyebrows black as a raven’s wing,

In an arch long drawn as is a ring,

Skin soft as silk, white as the froth of milk,

His eyes were like the dark wild-plum,

His hair was like ripe corn in the sun.

Securely my beloved slept,

Safe was my beloved kept

From the sun’s strong rays,

From the wind of wintry days.

And I sent my love

To the fair of Brachov

To buy for me linen,

Fine thread for my spinning,

And rich clothes to wear,

Gold beads for my hair.—

Thence he sent with a message, my mother,

With a message the moon in the night,

That I was to be his stepmother:

Then I sent to him in reply

The sun, for I said that he should

Go wed whomsoever he would.

With the leaf of the hazel-nut tree

He sent his answer to me,

That I should his stepmother be;

Little mother, but dear little mother,

Can I marry him to another,

Or shall I curse him, shall I curse him, my mother?“

“Be not mad, little daughter, go be

His stepmother, as he tells thee:

And you, Gypsy, Gypsy,

Bring my carriage to me,

For I am the grand stepmother.”

“But mother, oh mother, say how

Shall I speak, and what name call him now?”

“My beloved, my stepson,

My heart’s love, my cherished one.”

“And her, O my mother, what word

Shall I give her, what name?”

“My stepdaughter, abhorred,

The whole world’s shame.”

“Then, my mother, what shall I take him?

What gift shall I make him?”

“A handkerchief fine, little daughter,

Bread of white wheat, for thy loved one to eat,

And a glass of wine, my daughter.”

“And what take her, little mother,

What gift shall I make her?”

“A kerchief of thorns, little daughter;

A loaf of black bread for her whom he wed,

And a cup of poison, my daughter!”

* * * * * *

Whether this is anything more than a fragment one may reasonably doubt, but no more than this was known to the reciter. This is of course the disadvantage of orally imparted poems, that a great portion is very often left out of the beginning, the end, or the middle. Sometimes, again, two different songs are combined into one. We can understand without much difficulty what was meant by sending the moon with a letter or message, and sending back the sun; it is not so obvious what the letter written upon the hazel-nut leaf implies. The explanation which seems the most probable is: This Roumanian peasant lover could not write. He had no means of sending a message unless the sun would be the messenger, nor of receiving a reply unless the moon would bring it. The peasants sometimes make calls by whistling against a leaf, as our peasant boys do with a piece of grass. This apparently is what is meant by the answer sent by a hazel-nut leaf. Possibly the rest of the poem, if there had been a remaining part, would have made the difficult points of this ballad more clear. We might have had a tragedy of the Ugo and Parisina sort. But all that is now covered up in night.

With one poem of a simple kind we will end this short selection:

List ye who love:

Three evils ye will prove.

The first is that you love,

The next because he seldom comes

Your love to prove.

This bitterness your heart will know.

The third when altogether he shall go,

And say adieu.

He will not come back again;

But your heart will scorch with pain.

Leaf of the barley, he will say,

I know not what has found me,

Nor what sorcery around me

Takes me from you away—

But adieu forever and a day.

—The Nineteenth Century.

[HOME LIFE IN GERMANY.]

Housekeeping in Germany is reduced to a science; an accurate knowledge of principles, gained by experiment, experience and reflection. Personal and domestic expenditures are regulated in strict accordance with the best theories in consumption of capital and consumption of labor. This is especially true in the large cities where the houses are built to accommodate eight or ten families in addition, various people below in the basements, such as shoemakers, seamstresses, and washerwomen, who are ready to give service to the herrschaften above. These houses are generally built of brick, stuccoed, and oftentimes in the early years of their existence present a very handsome front, deceiving a stranger’s eye with the impression that they are stone. The massive front door opening to the corridor which leads to the porte-cochère, is in modern houses, most ornamental. Wrought iron, in arabesque patterns, with the monogram of the owner, serves to protect the plate-glass behind. The panels of wood below are elaborately carved. This door opens to the touch of a bell attached to a rubber tube and bell which remains in the basement where the portier lives. Invariably on the inside of the door one sees in large German letters, “Bitte die Thür leise zu zumachen.” Every person entering or going out reads this request, and, while occupied with reading, naturally lets the door slam the louder. Only sly young men returning from the kneipe in the darkness feel obliged to bear it in mind. The slamming of the great corridor door, however, makes no impression upon the numerous families above, and if it chanced to be a friend of Frau Schültze who just entered the house, there is yet time for the gracious lady (gnädige frau), who probably lives up the second flight of stairs, to take off her morning cap (which a German woman is apt to wear until she hears some one coming) before her friend has time to ring the bell to her own apartment.

On each floor in the largest houses are two apartments, usually of seven or eight rooms—large enough, the Germans think, to accommodate a family of eight or nine. And if you are a foreigner, examining these houses with a view to renting, the portier frau will accompany you around, exclaiming how comfortable it all is! There is a salon in the front, a large, finely-proportioned drawing-room, with bay-window and frescoed ceiling, and inlaid floor. Then the smaller room to the right, or left, as it may chance to be, looking also on the street with two windows, and generally a balcony, is intended for the library or sitting-room. Then throwing the folding-doors wide open, between the salon and dining-room, she explains how handsome the two rooms look during a dinner party. The dining-room has an alcove with a large window looking down into the court. Then you follow her through a narrow hall, passing perhaps the bath-room, with the servants’ room above—only five feet high—coming next to the kitchen. “But the bed-rooms, where are they?” you ask, not being able longer to suppress your anxiety on this point. “Ach, hier sind die!” exclaims the astonished frau, and opens the door to two small rooms, about 10x12. You look at your companion, the significant glance is returned and you start for the next house, or up a second flight of the same, to see if the division of rooms be there as ridiculous. After visiting about twenty-five houses, however, and finding them all alike, you conclude a bed-room with a German is a secondary consideration, and as to “guest chambers,” they have never dreamed of them! Goethe was a true German in this respect, and no wiser than the rest of his countrymen. Lewis, in his biography of Goethe, never fails to express astonishment at the small, dark room, in which the great man slept and finally died. In the handsome old house at Weimar the spacious reception rooms and commodious dining-room contrast strangely with the dark little closet which is called the bed-room. I heard a German gentleman, who came to America at the time Mr. Schurz did, but who was not so successful, and who returned to Germany, and was consequently embittered with everything, say, “The Berlin houses remind me, with their swell fronts and elegant drawing-rooms, of the fashion of wearing embroidered chemisettes when the rest of the toilet is mean and contemptible.” “The Germans,” said he, “put all the elegance on the front of their houses, while the sleeping-rooms are miserably ventilated little holes.” This does not apply to the houses built recently. There is no longer such discrepancy between bed-room and salon—economy, convenience and rich designing characterize many German houses now, which would have astonished the German mind a half-century ago.

The system by which these houses are rented or occupied is worth our attention, since it has come to be a matter of great expense for one family to rent or own a single house in our large cities. Let us suppose the man who owns an apartment house in a large German city to have a capital of $60,000 invested. He lives himself with his family in the parterre wohnung, or what we would call the first floor. The bel étage, or second floor, is the choice apartment, and rents, if the house be in a desirable part of the city, for 3,000 marks (a mark equals 25 or 24 cents). If the house be a double one, and this is generally the case, the first étage would bring 6,000 marks, the second étage 4,800 marks, and the third étage 3,600. He has also his own apartment, and below, the shoemaker, furnishes shoes for the family; the seamstress does the sewing and the washerwoman is the family laundress. From his capital he realizes a large percentage. The taxes are heavy, but the outlays are not great, being in most cases incidental, for the water, gas, and garbage, etc., are met by the different tenants.

As to the housekeeping in one of these apartments or wohnungs—the windows are casement style, with double glass, easy for washing but difficult for drapery. The floors are inlaid with different colored woods, and waxed. The walls are papered with rich and dark colors, and the ceilings finished in stucco. A characteristic German house will be furnished about as follows: Grand piano in the drawing-room or upright if preferred; in front of the sofa, a good imitation of Smyrna rug, (made in Silesia generally). A table stands on the rug removed from the sofa only far enough to allow a stout matron to squeeze in for a seat in one corner, which is her prerogative. Around the sofa are arranged a half dozen chairs, all belonging in color and form to the sofa. It would be unjust here not to say that the modern craze for bric-a-brac, for elegant hangings and unique furniture has penetrated the German mind as it has the English and American, and the revival of house decoration is appreciated in Germany by those who have the means to investigate the subject, but the house we describe is “pre-æsthetical” and stands for characteristic German taste, and it will be found compares most favorably with an American house before the “highly æsthetical” fever developed. The dress circle of Smyrna rug, sofa, table and chairs, is the center of attraction, but the opposite walls and the corners of the room are not neglected. The piano occupies a conspicuous position, and one or two pedestals, with choice copies from the antique, are hid in the corners. A lady’s writing desk, with delicate note paper ready for her use, a beautiful chair for her service, and a rich robe for her feet, completes a German lady’s drawing room. If she can not afford good pictures, she will have none. Steel engravings from the old masters are frequently found, but seldom oil paintings unless the parties be very wealthy or where artistic home talent prevails. How shocking many houses in America are made, by horrid crude pictures—in color, houses which maintain some beauty in wood work, carpets, walls, and furniture. The portfolio of etchings which are now sent to the farthest west and all over the United States for inspection, are creating a higher taste, and it is a laudable scheme, although accompanied with exorbitant prices.

The arrangement of our Teutonic lady’s drawing-room is so national that the palace and the poor man’s house has the same link of resemblance; for if a man owns but one table and one sofa, the table will stand in front of the sofa, and the chairs around it. This impresses a foreigner as being stupid and dull, and the American or French or English woman living in Germany conscientiously avoids all proximity of sofas and tables. There is some excuse for this stupid regularity in the circles which still have the kaffee klatsch; an old and artless entertainment which traveled women eschew, and women of high rank long ago ignored, but which remains a blessing to women of moderate means and unpretentious life. The hour for the kaffee klatsch is always 4 o’clock, and each guest is requested to bring her knitting or fancy work, to take her seat at a table spread with a white cloth, upon which the kaffee stands, covered up with a quilted hood to keep it warm, and flanked on either side by large baskets of cakes. Here these innocent women sit for hours sipping coffee and knitting and gossiping to their hearts’ content. It is the hour sans-souci for the genuine “hausfrau.” In such society one can recognize the simplicity and ingenuousness of the German woman, and contrast the startling differences of education and habit with her American sisters.

Returning to the furniture of the house, we find the library, or sitting-room (wohnstube), for private libraries are rare, and only found in the house of the gelehrte. It is true that every house has Goethe, Schiller, Wyland, Heine, Schlegel’s translation of Shakspere, Humbolt’s travels, and, it may chance to be, Kant, Hegel, and Strauss, if the paternal mind cares no longer for Martin Luther. In the neighborhood of the old wartburg the memory of Luther is too sacred to allow David Strauss to lie on the same shelf with the Reformer. If the family taste runs to æsthetics more than ethics, a cabinet of rare porcelain will take the place of a book-case in the sitting-room. But in either case the inevitable sewing table stands by the window with an easy chair by its side. If the gentleman of the house has writing at home, or any business engagements, then the sewing table finds its way to the big window in the alcove of the dining-room. This room is more comfortable than an American dining-room, inasmuch as it has, in addition to the set of dining-room chairs, a sofa and some easy seats, two closed cabinets for the damask, on either side of the buffet, which glistens with glass and china. Sofa pillows and footstools are abundant, which one can not say are easily discovered in the American home. But first of all a German house is comfortable, then ornamental. “Wine, wife and song,” is the motto, as it was in the days of Martin Luther, and gemüthlich, which may mean friendly, well-disposed, good-natured, kind-hearted; snug, comfortable, lack-a-daisical, is the word which expresses the tone of home life. The bed-rooms are unattractive, as we have said. Two mahogany bedsteads, side by side, “too short than that a man can stretch himself on them, and the covering narrower than that he can wrap himself in it.” These German beds are fearfully and wonderfully made, feathers below and above, pillows hid during the day under the covers, and finally, a white spread thrown over the entire mountain, in such a manner that it is impossible to distinguish head from foot.

Of late the sense of the beautiful has brought to light in the shop windows blue silk quilted spreads and lace coverings for these monstrosities, and corresponding materials for the toilet table. But the genuine hausfrau considers them a “snare and delusion.” A German lady who had just returned from a visit to America, said to me, “How do the American women make up their beds? I must come and learn. But,” added she, in the same breath, “I should think you would die under such thin covers!” The floors of the bed rooms are painted with yellow ochre and varnished. Small rugs lie in front of each bed, and before each piece of furniture. A candle, matches, and water carafe stand on the table by the bed. During the Philadelphia Exposition, a German, writing from an American hotel, observed: “How exasperating it is to go to bed in a room with no candle, only gas in the centre of the room, and innumerable chairs between one and the gas at midnight; and how dreadful to awaken and find white walls staring at one and reflecting the morning sun into one’s eyes.” Just criticism! The Germans are too highly cultivated in art to tolerate white walls, and the Americans are rapidly becoming so.

The kitchen is the German woman’s pride, and no wonder, with its shining rows of brass and copper kettles and cooking utensils, hanging so orderly against the gray wall, and the white porcelain oven, brass-doored and brass-knobbed. Does it surprise you that she likes to take a seat there every morning and talk over the menu for the day with Frederika, then unlock the pantry door and survey the clean shelves, all dressed up in perforated paper, or red leather and brass tacks, and loaded with groceries and confectioneries. What woman’s heart would not swell at the sight of such a pantry and kitchen, and such a capable, white-capped, white-aproned girl as Frederika? It is an ideal picture, but one often and often seen in Germany.

We shall make the acquaintance of German servants presently, but first some reference to the German ovens will be necessary, for it is with these that the servant’s time is first engaged in the morning and last at night. Next to the Dutch stove, the German oven is probably the most economical, and as far as mere temperature is concerned, the most effective of all warming arrangements. They are built of brick covered with porcelain and are part of the house, being built in with the walls. The cost is about seventy-five dollars for those finished with plain white tiles; but frequently the tiles are colored like majolica, and are highly decorated. In the Gewerbe Museum, of Berlin, there is a collection of tiles used in Nürnberg on the old ovens—some are most curious and beautiful. Since the spirit of decorative art is reviving in Germany, as elsewhere, the artists of highest rank do not consider it beneath their dignity to paint tiles or panels, or anything that can ornament the “house beautiful.” These ovens are generally built in the corner of a room, and are oftentimes eleven feet high. The fire is burned in a furnace near the bottom, and the heated smoke is made repeatedly to traverse the structure from side to side along the winding passage before it reaches the top, where a pipe conveys it, when comparatively cold, into a flue in the wall. The heated mass of brick continues to warm the room long after the fuel is burned. The same quantity of fuel which heats a German oven for a day is consumed in an open grate in three hours. In Northern Germany the poorer classes burn turf and charcoal, the better classes use the turf to mix with the stone-coal. Wagons of turf are brought to the front of the house early in the morning, the horses unhitched and taken away. The fuel is then carried basket by basket full, on the backs of old women, to the attic or fifth story of the house, which is divided into store rooms for the different herrschaften. On this floor is stored the wood, the coal, the turf. Early in the morning the back stairs are crowded with the various servants, from the different apartments, going up and down with their baskets of fuel. The fire must be lighted one hour before the rooms become comfortable. While the fires are beginning to burn the waxed floors are being polished, which is the time in our American or English economy for cooking the breakfast. If our German friends however prefer polished floors to gladden their sight on rising, to heavy beefsteaks to warm their stomachs, what reason have we to criticise? Frederika is lighting not the kitchen fire, but a little spirit lamp underneath the “coffee machine,” or boiler, and carrying in the fresh (but cold) rolls which she has just received from the baker’s wife at the back door, and in ten minutes she will formally announce to the gnädigen herrn and the gnädiger frau (gracious lord and gracious lady) that “frühstück ist fertig” (breakfast is ready). The gnädiger herr will appear wrapped up in a heavy morning wrapper (made of gray cloth, trimmed in mazarine blue) with newspaper in hand, and the gnädige frau will take her seat at the table where the coffee is sending up its smoke. She looks, in her morning cap and white apron, surely as healthy as her English sisters, and much more so than the beautiful but frail American woman, who sits eating her mutton chops and warm muffins. Who shall settle the question if doctors disagree? Continental Europe has existed on coffee and cold bread and eggs and never had dyspepsia, while England and America have grown fat or nervous on the beefsteak and muffins.

The German washing is so well-known, and has afforded so much amusement, that I would not overthrow the traditions; yet after a long residence in Germany, and an experience of years in keeping house in a German apartment, I learned to regard the “grosse wäsche” as a necessary development of the apartment system of keeping house. For instance, there is one common wash-room, and one drying-room; the family in the parterre wohnung engage it the first two days in the week, then it belongs to the family on the opposite side of the house, and successively to the other inmates of the house, so that weekly occupancy is out of the question. But a foreigner can escape this egregious imposition by sending the washing out of the house every week and waiting patiently for it to return in ten days.

I was asked repeatedly by my German lady friends, “Where is your wedding chest of linen?” meaning a carved cedar chest containing a wedding dowry of linen, enough to last through four generations, which is quite the thing to be inspected by one’s intimate friends, more than the trousseau. How should an American woman answer such a question, or place herself in the favorable estimation of her good German friends again after shocking their education and hereditary taste by confessing that her house linen was only sufficient for present use. There is a sense of pride in the monthly washing in Germany little dreamed of by the general observer.

A cook, a house-girl, or kindermädchen, and a man-servant (diener) are the usual number of domestics employed by a well-to-do German family where there are children. If there are no children, a cook and diener are sufficient help, even in a large city. In the country one girl is enough. She is “Jack-of-all-trades,” and gets poor pay and less praise for her proficiency. Her brawny arms and rosy cheeks are only found admirable by some wandering artist, who makes a hasty sketch of her carrying water from the village fountain. Among people who keep up any social style a diener in livery is indispensable. He opens the door, serves at table, sets the table, polishes the floors, does the errands, carries the invitation, walks behind the ladies when they go out, or sits on the box with the coachman when they are driving. Above all, he keeps Frederika in a good humor by polishing the doors of her oven, and sipping coffee with her while the herrschaften are sipping theirs. She learns to call him her “lieber Schatz,” and by and by, Frederika’s head becomes turned, and the cooking is not so perfect. The wages of this diener are not large according to American ideas; he receives, according to his ability, per month, twenty thalers, ten thalers, five, or even two and a half, if he is young, and has never served outside a restaurant. In addition to his wages, he gets good food, or the equivalent in money, which he generally prefers, for he can then go to the bier garten and get his meals, or eat with the family of the porter below. A servant must understand his or her work distinctly before entering into an engagement. Each must have a book in which the employer can read the date of birth, place of birth, the occupation of parents, the character of the employe, the recommendation or condemnation of the last employer. This book is kept by the lady of the house as long as the servant remains in her service, and when leaving, if the person has been faithful, she is expected to write a good recommendation in the book. There are two classes of cooks in Germany—the finished cook (die fertige köchin), and the cook who is willing to do any kind of work. Die fertige köchin is an educated queen in her department, and like every autocrat, her power renders her unaccountable for her actions. She prefers to do the marketing, and is in league with all the grocers and butchers. This coalition of butchers, bakers, grocers, and cooks in Germany is a confederacy which threatens the hausfrau, the baroness and royal household alike. Socialism is a ubiquitous monster, and who feels it more than the helpless woman with her account books before her, knowing there is no remedy if the cook says “Meat has risen, and the butcher would not take less.” An unending task in a European kitchen is dish washing, for six dozen plates in serving the dinner there go no farther than one dozen in the ordinary American way. The diener is expected to help the cook in this work, and once a week a schauer frau (scouring woman, or woman inspector), comes to help. It is a distracting day in the wirthschaft, and serves as a weekly reminder of what is to come before Christmas and Easter. This schauer frau comes early in the morning, tears down all the kitchen utensils, takes off the brass oven doors, sets all the copper kettles and tin ware in a row, and goes to work scouring them as bright as we would think necessary for a spring cleaning. Then she washes the windows, scrubs the floors, and returns with her fifteen silver groschen in the evening as contented as a woman in America would be with a dollar. Christmas and Easter are the seasons above all other times of the year for thorough cleaning. Then the floors are so highly polished, and the brass knobs and doors of the porcelain ovens made so brilliant that the servants go around in felt slippers and old gloves, for fear of dimming the luster before the dawn of the sacred days. Christmas is an expensive season for the herrschaften—so many presents expected: the cook, the diener, the porter and the portier frau, the lamp lighter, the gas man, the butcher, the baker, and candlestick-maker, and above all, the letter carrier. Eight and five dollars are small amounts for the cook and diener. But we must remember the cook’s small wages during the year (from five to twelve dollars is the usual monthly wages), before pronouncing the Christmas gift too much.

Feiertage, or holidays for servants in Germany, are a great annoyance to the order of domestic life. They are so importunant in their demands, and so obstinately disagreeable if not gratified, that it is better for the family to go to the restaurant for dinner and “eat bitter herbs where there is peace,” than to remain at home for “a stalled ox,” with angry servants to serve it. While they demand so much for themselves, they are equally disappointed if the herrschaften do not celebrate every birthday of their own. The extra work is no consideration, and by touching little ways they show their pleasure when extra company is expected. Bouquets are placed on the coffee table by the plate of the member of the family whose birthday has arrived; a cake, with the number of candles to indicate the age of the person is found burning, and Frederika and August have broad smiles on their faces as they come in and rattle off some poetry which they have committed to memory for the occasion, wishing the person whose birthday they are celebrating glück and heil.

Dinner parties are the most frequent and most formal entertainments in Germany. They are stereotyped, but the type belongs purely to Germany. When the ladies enter the room, after the introductions they are invited to be seated on the sofa and chairs of the “dress-circle” which we have described. The gentlemen stand around the fair ones, bending or breaking their backs in the effort to talk, or the more unconcerned stand off in groups, learning from the hostess at the earliest moment which ladies they are to escort to the table. The seat on the sofa is the seat of honor, and if a lady of inferior rank has arrived first and occupied that place, she rises immediately and resigns it on seeing her superior enter the room; so that a captain’s wife will offer the seat to a major’s wife, and a major’s wife to a general’s wife, and so on. The white-gloved diener throws open the doors of the dining-room ten minutes after the arrival of the guests, and the guests have the privilege of speaking to each other at the table if an introduction has failed in any case in the salon. The dinner is served entirely from the buffet; the snowy damask, flowers and glass are only presented upon the table for the guests to feast their eyes upon. The meats are all carved in the kitchen, and handed around by the servants. A good menu resembles the French taste and order somewhat, although a discerning eye will detect the German element in the following:

Bouillon (consommé).
Caviar (caviare).
Lobster.
Salmon du Rhin.
Turbot d’Ostende.
Poulets Santés aux Truffes.
Pâté de Foie Gras.
Filet de Bœuf Garni, Remouladen Sauce.

Rehbraten,	}	Salad Compotes.
Petit Pois,

Butter und Käse und Radieschen, mit Pumpernickel.
Pudding d’Orange.
Dessert.
Café et Liqueurs.

There is much leisure, much conversation, and much “toasting,” at a German dinner. Instead of the ladies retiring when the cigars and coffee are served, as they do in England, the gentlemen and ladies leave the table at the same time, and upon entering the salon each guest goes to the host and hostess and offers his or her hand, saying in the most gracious manner, “gesegnete malzeit.” The guests all shake hands with each other and repeat the same, and then the gentlemen go into the library to smoke, and coffee is taken to them, as it is also brought to the ladies in the salon. The German hostess does not dress for her dinner parties as much as the English women. She is never décolleté—generally appears in light or black silk, square neck and half sleeves, with long white gloves. When the hour for departure comes, the diener goes down to the street corner, orders a droschke (cab) for those who have not private carriages, for one mark (twenty-five cents), the old kutcher will drive away the happy or weary guest, and the diener returns with a bright countenance and full pocket, having received from each guest in the corridor below enough “five silver groschens” to take Frederika to twenty concerts, and buy as many glasses of beer as they want. And so goes life in the “Vaterland!”

[THE VALUE OF GOOD FOOD.]

The food which you give to your body keeps it for long years unwasted and unworn, besides giving it the power by which it works and moves. The food, to you, is maintenance as well as strength. You do not destroy yourself by the labor you get through.

The bread and meat which you eat, first get changed into the substance of your body; actually become flesh and blood; then as flesh and blood they perform a certain amount of useful labor. Like the iron of the steam engine, they are worn away by the work; but that is not of any real consequence, because fresh food will make fresh flesh and blood, capable of doing fresh work. You therefore are fed, not only that you may be able to work, but also that you may be kept in repair while you are working, at least during some three-score years and ten.

The food first renews the worn body, and then it is the renewed body which is worn again by work, yet again to be renewed. Here, indeed, is a wonderful difference between the divinely-planned mechanism and the mechanism made by human hands.

Coal does something for the steam engine besides setting it to work—it makes it warm. Soon after the fire has been lit in the furnace, the iron gets furiously hot, and the water in the boiler turns into scalding steam; all this heat really comes out of the coal. It was hidden away in the black mass, and only required that to be placed in the furnace, to be set light to, and to be blown upon by a draught of air, in order that it might be brought out and made serviceable. One pound of coal has heat enough hidden away in it to boil sixty pints of water.

But your body is too warm. And where do you think it gets its heat from? Starve yourself for a day or two, and you will find this out. You will, under such circumstances, feel colder and colder, as well as getting weaker and weaker. A good nourishing meal on the other hand, will directly make you glow with warmth. Food warms the body, as it furnishes it with strength. There is as much heat produced in your body in a single year, as would be sufficient to turn eleven tons of ice into steam; as much in a single day, as would boil eighty pints of water.

Food, then, does three distinct things for the living body, and the living body must be duly fed at proper intervals, in order that three distinct ends may be gained. It keeps the body warm. It maintains it in a state of repair, notwithstanding the wear and tear to which it is exposed while laboring. And it gives it strength and power. Weigh out two pounds of bread and meat, and look at them. The two pounds make no very great show. But eat them, and in the wonderful contrivances of your body, those two pounds of bread and meat will sustain its machinery unwasted during the exertion of a fair day’s work, and in addition to this will supply heat enough to make eighty pints of water boil, and strength enough to lift a ton weight one mile!

In order that food may render these important services, it is necessary that it shall be wisely chosen, and no less wisely used. Many men get wasting disease and death out of food, in the place of nourishment, warmth, and vigor. If we were to heap up wet sand in the furnace of the steam engine, instead of coal, fire would be smothered, and the movement of the machinery stopped. If we were to heap up gunpowder there, the whole would be blown into fragments in a moment. Or so again, the fire of the furnace might be extinguished by smothering it with too great an abundance of coal; or it might be allowed to smoulder and die out for want. Exactly in the same way the fire and strength of the living body may be smothered by a too heavy load, or by a bad kind of food. Or it may be fanned into the explosion of destructive inflammation and fever. It is important, therefore, that everyone should know what right food is, and how good food requires to be managed. When I go down to see my friend’s yarn-spinning steam engine, I find that a very great amount of care is bestowed upon its feeding. Only the most suitable coal is supplied for its consumption, and the stoker who feeds it is chosen from among his companion workmen for his judgment, and he is trained to be exceedingly careful, watching its wants, and studying its appetite, so as to give exactly what it can manage, a little and often, never allowing the furnace to be either too hungry or too much gorged.

My friend is ten times more particular about the feeding of his steam engine, than he is about the feeding of himself, and in this respect he is pretty much like the rest of mankind. Men select and regulate, with the most careful thought, what they put into the furnaces of their machinery; but into those delicate and sensible living furnaces which they carry about in their own bodies, they toss with reckless indifference, now, as it were, lumps of lead, and now explosive gunpowder. There is, indeed, sad need that men should be made more thoughtful than they are about feeding their bodies. As a guardian and supporter of the health, good food stands close by the side of fresh air and pure water. Bad feeding, on the other hand, is the ally of foul air and deficiency of water, in bringing about disorder. Improper management in feeding, then, is another way in which men lay up for themselves disease and suffering, and cause sickness to take the place of health.

Man’s food consists of an almost endless variety of substances. The surface of the earth is covered with things which man can eat, and get strength out of. This is a very bountiful arrangement, made by Divine Providence, in order that the rapidly increasing multitudes of the human race may be supported. Into whatever diversity of climate or country man can go, there he finds a rich abundance of the nourishment which the continued well-being of his body requires. In the hot tropics he gathers bread-fruit from the trees, and plucks rice from the ground. In temperate lands he covers the soil with corn, and pastures beef-yielding oxen and mutton-affording sheep upon the grass. In the frozen wastes that lie near the poles, he gets whale-blubber and seal-oil from the inhabitants of the ocean. The water teems every where with fish, the air with fowl, and the solid ground is literally painted green with fattening grass. Nearly all food substances are, however, more or less solid bodies, in order that they may be kept conveniently in store until they are immediately needed, and it is, therefore, a natural result of this arrangement that they have to undergo a sort of preparation before they can be put to use. The several parts of the body which have to be nourished are far more delicate than the finest hairs. Now suppose that you were set to get beef and bread into hairs, I fancy you would find yourself rather puzzled by the task. God however is not so puzzled. He pours beef and bread into fibres that are as much smaller than hairs, as hairs themselves are smaller than men six feet high and three feet round. You will, no doubt, like to learn how this is done.

The All-wise and Almighty Designer of life has seen fit to employ in the work an agent that is already familiar to us. This agent is pure water. God washes food into the body, exactly as he washes worn-up material out of it. The very water, indeed, which carries away the waste, has in the first instance carried in the food. God has laid down pipes of supply which run every where through the structures of the body, exactly as he has laid down the drain-pipes. These pipes branch out to the hair, the eyes, the head, the feet, the flesh, the bones, and the skin. At the beginning of the supply pipes there is a great pump always at work, pumping on the supply. This pump is called the heart. Place your hand on the left side of your chest, and you will feel how this heart is springing at its pumping work. You will be sensible that it is raising itself up at its labor, at every stroke, so determined is the exertion of its strength. The supply-pipes are termed arteries. One large arterial pipe comes out from the heart, and then sends out branches in all directions, very much like the water-pipes sent out from the great reservoir into all the houses of a town. The branch-pipes get smaller and smaller as they go from the main, until at last they are many times smaller than the smallest hair. The food that is washed through the branching supply-pipes, by the strokes of the heart, is called blood. There are about twenty pounds of blood in the body of a full grown, active man; of these twenty pounds nearly sixteen are nothing else than pure water, the other four pounds are the finely divided food which is being hurried along by the water. This then is what I mean when I say that the food is washed into the body, by the agency of water. Take the finest needle you can find, and stick its point any where into your body, and you will find that blood will rush out of the hole. This will show you what great care has been taken to send supply-pipes everywhere. There is no spot, however small, into which a needle point can be thrust without wounding a supply-pipe. When the heart pumps, red blood thus flushes through every portion of the living frame, repairing and warming it, and supporting it in its offices. But you will say I have not yet proved my case. Food is washed out of the heart to all parts of the body. This heart, however, is already in the body. There is therefore no washing of the food into the body here. It is already in, when it is pumped from the heart; but where does the heart get the blood from, which it pumps onwards? How can it be shown that the blood comes from the food? This is to be my next step. I am going on to explain to you that the heart gets its blood from the food which is eaten; that the blood indeed is finely divided food given up to the carrying power of water; food finely prepared for its task of nourishing the living frame. How then is the food thus prepared? how is solid food turned into liquid and easily flowing blood?

Food is turned into blood by being digested. Men have digesting bags, more commonly known under the name of stomachs, inside of them, into which portions of digestible substances are placed from time to time. These inside digesting bags are particularly convenient, because when a fair quantity of food is once packed away there, men may move about in pursuit of their business without having to give any further heed to the digesting work that is going on in their behoof. Before, however, food is passed down into the digesting bag, it is first ground in a powerful mill, and mixed up with liquid into a sort of paste. The mill has many pairs of very hard stones set in rows over against each other. It is called the mouth, and the stones are termed teeth. The liquid, which makes the ground food into paste, is poured out from little taps laid on in the mill or mouth, and is called the saliva.

When the ground and moistened food has been deposited in the stomach, more liquid is poured out upon it there. This liquid is termed the “gastric” or stomach juice. Next it is shaken, and churned up, and turned over by the movements of the stomach-bag. After a few hours’ churning, it has become so soft and pulpy from the soaking, that it is ready to advance another stage. Then a sort of sluice-gate at the end of the stomach is opened, and down the pulp goes into the bowel, there to be mixed with another liquid called bile, or liver juice, and the soaking or digestion is completed. The pulp then consists of two things—a white milk-like liquid; that is the rich and nourishing part of the food, ground and soaked down to the utmost fineness, and mingled with some of the water which has been drunk. And a coarse solid substance, still undigested; that is the waste part of the food which has resisted the dissolving power of the stomach, and is on its way to be rejected as good for nothing. The white milk-like essence of the food gets sucked up, by a quantity of little holes or mouths that lie all over the lining of the bowel, as the pulp moves down this canal. Then it is carried by tubes provided for the purpose into one main channel. This channel runs upwards until it ends in the great forcing pump. Poured into the heart, it reinforces the blood which it finds there, and is sent onwards with it through the supply-pipes. This is how food becomes blood.

But there are certain distinct and different principles which the body requires should be furnished to it, out of food. You stand there very firmly on the ground, and you look jolly and substantial enough. I should think from your appearance you have been in no way stinted in the matter of supplies. I estimate, at a guess, that your substantial body would weigh, some one hundred and fifty pounds, if placed in the scales. Now what do you think the greater part of those one hundred and fifty pounds is composed of. Bones? Not exactly, you are too soft for that. Flesh? There seems plenty of flesh, but the flesh is not the most abundant element. Brains? I am afraid they are less than the flesh. No. You will wonder indeed when I tell you that three-quarters of that firm and well-knit frame are nothing else but water. If I were to take your body and dry it until all its water was gone, there would remain behind nothing but thirty-seven pounds of dry mummy-substance, in the place of the original one hundred and fifty pounds; one hundred and thirteen pounds of water would have steamed away. You will see then that water must be furnished in fair quantity, with or in the food. You have heard, I do not doubt, many horrible and sad things which have happened when people have been kept a long time without water. Thanks to the bounty of Providence, this privation is, however, one that very rarely occurs.

But now, supposing that we have steamed away the one hundred and thirteen pounds of water, and that there are left behind thirty-seven pounds of dry substance, what does that substance consist of? It still contains several distinct things, which have had entirely distinct offices to perform in the living frame.

First, you know, there is that flesh, which makes so comely a show. Now, we shall be able to find out how much there really is of flesh. Of dry flesh-substance, including a little skin and jelly, there are seventeen pounds, and that is the working part of the frame. It is by its means the ton-weight can be lifted one mile high in a single day, and that all the moving and acting, of whatever kind, are effected. Remember, then, that the acting part of the living body is flesh-substance, and that of that flesh-substance there are not more than seventeen pounds in a full-grown man.

While your body is alive, there is a hard frame-work inside of it, upon which the soft flesh is fixed, in order that it may be kept in a convenient and durable form, and around which the water is packed in a countless myriad of chambers, and vessels, and porous fibres. The hard internal frame-work is composed of what are called bones. In the dried mummy, left when the moisture is all gone from the body, there are rather more than nine pounds of this mineral bone-substance. But there are also nearly three-quarters of a pound of other mineral substances, which were scattered about in various situations, and which were employed for various purposes. There is salt which was in the saliva, in the gristle, and in the blood. There is flint which was in the hair. There is iron which was in the blood. There is potash which was mixed with the flesh-substance. There are lime and phosphorus in the hard millstones—the teeth; and there is phosphorus, which was in the nerves and the brain. These mineral substances with the bone-earth, which is principally a kind of lime, form together the ash or dust which is returned to the ground after the body has decayed. It is the flesh-substance which flies away to become poison-vapor in the air.

But besides water to do transporting work, flesh substance to do active mechanical or moving work, and mineral substance to do passive mechanical or supporting work, there is yet another kind of material within the body. You have as much as six pounds of fat, scattered about or packed away amid the seventeen pounds of dry flesh. What can that be for? What use do you think you make of your fat? You have, I dare say, a sort of comfortable sense that it keeps you warm. You know that some of your lean neighbors cast envious eyes towards you in severe winter weather, and have chattering teeth and goose’s skins, when you are quite free from such tokens of chilliness. But you will nevertheless be surprised when I tell you what a really fiery piece of business this warming by fat is. Your fat is a store of fuel, which you are going to burn to heat your body, exactly as you burn coal in the grate to heat your room in the winter. It is oil laid by, to be consumed gradually, as a sort of liquid coal, in the furnace of the living machine. Of this, we shall, however, have to say more, by itself, by and by. For the present merely bear in mind that fat is the fuel substance which furnishes warmth to the body. It also combines with the phosphorus and with water to make up the nerve-substance and the brain-substance, which do the feeling and thinking work. These too, however, will have to be spoken of hereafter by themselves.

Let us now then take stock of the stores we have on hand, within the skin of a living body of 150 pounds weight. We have

Water for transport and moistening	113	pounds
Flesh-substance for movement	17	pounds
Mineral-substance for support	10	pounds
Fuel-substance for warming	6	pounds
If we add these together, our sum is	146	pounds

We still want four pounds more to make up our 150. Where are we to get these? Why we have got them already. Have we not already learned that there are four pounds of freshly-digested food being washed along through the supply-pipes of the body?

We have only to add to the previous	146	pounds
Dry substance of the blood	4	pounds
and our tally is completed to	150	pounds

As the blood is the direct source of supply to all the structures of the body, the material which is being poured out through the supply-pipes,—it follows that those four pounds must contain within themselves flesh-substance, mineral ash, and fuel. There are in twenty pounds of blood, sixteen pounds of water to wash along the more substantial part through the supply-pipes, three pounds ten ounces of flesh-substance, four ounces of fuel, and about two ounces of mineral matter; salt, phosphorus, lime, and the rest.

The blood is speedily exhausted of its richness, because it gives up its several ingredients to the different parts of the living frame to confer warmth, repair, and active strength upon them. The warmth is procured by burning the fat; you will easily understand that; you know that an oil lamp gets very hot whilst its flame is kept up. The repair is effected by the plastering of new matter out of the blood, upon all the different structures as they wear away. Each structure chooses for itself out of the blood what it wants, and arranges what it takes in due order. But you would now like to know how active strength is supplied by the blood. It will not be possible just now to tell you concerning this, all which might be, and indeed ought to be told, because we have other and more practical things to bend our attention to. But this much you will easily comprehend. The power comes out of that very change of substance, which we call wear. The “wear” is actually the turning of the substance into power. Upon another occasion this may be made more plain.

The blood supplies what every part of the living body requires, and of course itself loses what it gives out. But the exhausted blood is in its turn renewed and refreshed by occasional supplies of food. Here then we at last arrive at the pith of the subject we are speaking of. The food supplies the blood, and the blood supplies the body. Therefore efficient and good food must have in it all the several principles required by the body—flesh, fuel, and mineral. No kind of food is sufficient to maintain vigorous life and health, which does not contain a due amount of every one of these.

When the young animal comes first into the world, its powers of digestion are weak, and it is fed for some time entirely upon a food already digested for it by the parent. This parent-prepared food of the young animal, which is called milk, of course contains within itself all the several matters which have been spoken of above, as necessary for the supply of the body. Thus when the dairy-maid curdles milk with rennet, and draws off the whey, afterwards pressing and drying the curdled part, the curd at length comes out of the press as cheese. That is the flesh-substance which was contained in the milk. When the dairy-maid turns and twists cream about in the churn, until butter collects in the midst of it—that butter is the fuel-substance, or fat, which was contained in the milk. The whey which is taken off from the cheese, or butter, is principally water; but if this water were steamed away by heat, there would remain behind a small quantity of fixed ash, which could not escape. This is the mineral-substance. Here then we have what we may term a specimen of Nature’s pattern-food. The relative proportion in which the several food-principles are contained in milk, becomes most excellent guide to the way in which they should be used in the more artificial feeding of later life. Take then as

A RECEIPT FOR PATTERN-FOOD,

the following, which expresses the relative quantities of cheese, butter, and ash, in milk:

• One ounce of Flesh-substance,
• Two ounces of Fuel-substance, and
• Ninety grains of Mineral-substance,
• To twenty-two ounces of Water.

The most extensively and generally used of all the articles of human diet is bread. It has been fittingly called “the staff of life.” Now it is a curious and remarkable fact that bread contains in itself just the same principles as milk; but it is of course drier, and has proportionally more fuel and less flesh-making substance. The flour, from which it is made, is composed of a stiff, sticky paste, and a fine white powder, well mixed up together. The paste is flesh-substance; it is nearly the same thing, indeed, as the flesh of the body, in all excepting arrangement. The powder is starch: just such as is used in the work of the laundry. Now starch is merely fat in its first stage of preparation.

When bread is well made, the rising of the dough marks the change of the store-starch into sugar and gum through fermentation. This is really a beginning of the work of digestion, and, in so far, a lightening of the task the stomach will have to perform. It is very important, however, that this change shall be carried to a proper point, and then stopped. Bread should be neither too heavy nor too light. If the former, it will not be easy enough of digestion; if the latter, some portion of the virtue will have been unnecessarily wasted. Bread contains a great deal of water, and so to a certain extent is both food and drink.

Brown bread is more rich in flesh-making substance, bulk for bulk, than fine wheaten bread, because the outer husk of the grain, which constitutes the bran, itself contains a large quantity of that material. When the dough is formed from whole meal, instead of fine flour, the cost of the bread is considerably diminished, at the same time that its bulk and weight are, even in a greater degree, increased.

Rye bread is not so pleasant in flavor as wheaten bread, but it is about equal to it in nourishment, and can be kept for months without being spoiled, which wheaten bread can not. Oatmeal can not be fermented like wheaten meal, but it is nearly as rich again in flesh-making substance. It is its very richness in this gluey material, which renders it incapable of being made into bread. Scotch men and women consume a great quantity of oatmeal as porridge and unfermented cake, and get both very fat and strong upon their food. This article of diet has, indeed, the recommendation of being very appropriate for young people, who are growing rapidly, and is fortunately, at the same time, comparatively cheap.

Milk, the pattern food, contains, it will be remembered, twice as much fuel as flesh-substance in it. But the bread contains eight times as much fuel as flesh-making substance. Consequently a great deal more bread has to be consumed to get the same amount of nourishment out of it, and then very much more fuel has been taken into the frame than is required, which has to be got rid of as waste. Hence it is both economical and wise to add to a bread diet, whenever this can be done, some other kind of food, which consists principally of flesh-substance. Butter and fat are also advantageously taken with it, because the fuel contained within bread is a great deal of it still only store-fuel, and unfit to undergo immediate burning.

The best addition that can be made to bread-diet is obviously that flesh substance which is already in a very perfect and condensed state—namely, Meat. Lean beef contains four times as much flesh-substance, weight for weight, as the most nutritious bread, and it is entirely destitute of the store-fuel, starch, of which bread has such a superabundance. Meat therefore is manifestly the natural ally of bread in the formation of a very nutritious diet. All wild animals have very little fat mixed with their flesh. It is, however, the great object of the grazing farmer to make his mutton and beef as fat as he can. Meat, as it is sent to market, commonly has one-third of its substance fat alone. Such meat approaches more nearly to the nature of bread, and indeed may almost be used instead of it, so far as its influence on the support and warming of the frame is concerned.

It is even more important how meat is cooked, than it is how bread is made.

A pound of meat loses an ounce more in baking, and an ounce and half more in roasting, than in boiling. Boiling is therefore the most economical method of the three. Meat should always be put first into boiling-hot water, because by this means the pores of the surface are at once closed fast, and the juices shut in. When meat is placed in cold water, and kept gently simmering, the juices all ooze out into the water. The latter plan is the best mode of proceeding, when the object is to make nutritious soup or broth. But when it is desired to keep the meat itself nutritious, the employment of the greater heat first is the more judicious course. So likewise in roasting, the meat should be placed at once close before a clear fierce fire, in order that by the curdling power of the heat a great coat may be formed upon it, through which the juice cannot flow; then it should be removed further away, in order that the inside may go on cooking more gradually by the heat of the imprisoned juices. When meat is placed before a dull, slow fire at the first, the principal part of the gravy runs out, before the surface is hardened and closed.

The great object of cooking is the reduction of the several principles of the food into such a soluble state as will prepare them to be easily acted upon by the digestive powers of the stomach, at the same time that none of their virtue is allowed to be lost. Cooking is, indeed, properly the first stage of digestion; it is an art which the intelligence of man has taught him, in order that food may be made to go as far as possible in furnishing nourishment to living frames. By good cooking, hosts of things are converted into excellent nourishment, which would be entirely unmanageable by the stomach without such assistance. The art of cookery ought, however, never to be carried further than this. It should not strive to make men eat more than their bodies want, by furnishing the temptation of delicious flavors. Every meal should have brought together into it a due admixture of the several distinct principles, which have been named as the great requirements of the body; but there should be no greater degree of mixture than is just sufficient to ensure this. There should be flesh-substance in a half-dissolving, or tender stage. There should be a still larger amount of fuel-substance, partly fat, and partly such as is in a condition capable of being converted into fat in the stomach and blood. Mineral substance enough is sure to be present in every kind of food; and water, of course, can be added in any amount, as drink.

The potato contains twelve times as much starch as flesh-making substance; it is thus one-half less nutritious than bread. On this account it is very generally made the companion of meat.

It is of the very highest importance that any one who is likely to ever have the care of a household, whether large or small, should so far understand the objects of cooking and the principles upon which the process requires to be performed, as to be able to see that food is properly and economically prepared. If your means be small, remember that such knowledge can make that portion of your money which is devoted to the purchase of food, go as far again, and yield twice as much harmless gratification as it would otherwise do; if you have an abundance of means, then the knowledge may be made serviceable in providing only such food as is suitable to the maintenance of health and strength, and the avoidance of disease. If you have a family of children to bring up, and have plenty of money to do it with, you are perfectly right to furnish them with every accomplishment, and every advantage learning confers; but never forget that no woman is ever less accomplished because she knows something about homely household concerns,—cooking among them,—as well as a great deal concerning other things.

Fish very nearly resembles lean meat in its character; it is hence a very good companion to potatoes and bread. In a general way it requires to be eaten with butter or oil on account of its deficiency in this ingredient.

Fresh vegetables contain a very large proportion of water, but there is in their structure also a considerable amount of flesh-making substance, besides starch and sugar.

Fresh vegetables require, in most instances, to be boiled before they are eaten, because their juices contain disagreeable flavors, and in some instances unwholesome ingredients, which are, however, entirely removed by the influence of boiling water. Ripe fruits, on the other hand, are vegetable substances, which have been thoroughly cooked by the maturing powers of the sun, and which have also been endowed, by the hand of Nature, with the most delicious flavors, in order to tempt man to feed on them in due season; they are, so to speak, bouquets provided for the palate.

We have now to suppose that a wholesome but plain meal of good bread, and well-cooked meat and vegetables, selected and prepared according to the principles which have been explained, is set before you, and that you are about to apply these to their proper office of nourishing your body; how will you proceed? You will introduce the food, morsel after morsel, into your digesting bag. Now while you are doing this, take care to bear in mind what you are about. You are swallowing substances that will need to be brought most thoroughly within the power of the saliva and stomach-juices, in order that these may perform their wondrous dissolving work. Do not, then, forget the mill. Those ivory teeth have not been planted so firmly in your jaws for no purpose. They are meant for work, and for hard work too. Food is not intended to be bolted, but to be ground. Do not furnish one single morsel with its pass until it has been reduced to the finest pulp; then the saliva will get to every grain of the store-starch, and change it into serviceable sugar and gum, and the stomach-juice and liver-juice will get to every fibre of the flesh-substance, and reduce it to milk-white liquid, capable of entering the channels of the supply-pipes. If you bolt, instead of thoroughly grinding your food in the mill, be assured that the heavy lumps will prove too much for your digesting bag, however strong that may be. The greater portion, after having oppressed the offended stomach with their unmanageable load, will cause griping and all sorts of annoyance, and will at last be dismissed from it, undissolved and without having furnished any nourishment.

Another important thing is to get enough food if you can; the body requires to be sufficiently nourished. On the other hand, however, be very careful that you do not attempt to get more than enough. If you do try to accomplish this you will fail in the attempt, and have to pay a heavy penalty for your failure. Thousands upon thousands of people do try, and do fail, and then pay such penalties. You have heard it said that enough is as good as a feast. This is only a half-truth, it does not go sufficiently far. Enough is far better than a feast, if “a feast,” means more than enough. There is more danger really in over-feeding, than under-feeding. Countless numbers of underfed countrymen work through a long life in the fields, in happiness and contentment, and arrive at old age, almost without an hour of illness. But every overfed man sooner or later has to go to bed, and send for the doctor to help him to get rid either of rheumatism, or fever, or gout, or inflammation, which are forms of disorder into which superfluous food often changes itself. The life of labor and short commons, has upon the whole a much larger share of happiness, than the life of laziness and luxury.

But what is enough? That in regard to the feeding is a very serious question. At the first glance, too, it seems to be one which is not altogether easy to answer, because some men require more food than others, just as some steam engines consume more coal than others, to keep themselves moving; and just as some lamps take more oil than others, to keep up their flames. It is, nevertheless, a question which may be very easily answered. Every man who eats his meal slowly and deliberately,—not forgetting the mill,—has had enough when his appetite is satisfied. Appetite really is Nature’s own guard. It is ruled, not by the state of the stomach, but by the condition of the blood. When so much blood has been taken from the supply-pipes of your body, by the working parts, that those pipes begin to be comparatively empty, their emptiness makes itself felt in your frame as hunger. Obedient to the hint, you find up food and eat. But while you are eating what happens? First you seize the food with all the keen relish of a hungry man. Then as you eat on, the relish becomes less and less, and if your meal be a simple one, when you have had enough, all relish has disappeared, and the very things that tasted so deliciously at first, are insipid, so that you find no farther enjoyment in the act of grinding and swallowing them. Go on eating after this, and the insipidity will be transformed into disgust; and if notwithstanding this you still persevere in forcing food into your stomach, that sensible organ will at last rebel against the tyranny, and return the whole which it has received upon your hands. Then it will be some little time before the stomach gets over the insult. Consequently the blood remains all this while in the impoverished state, and the result of the over-gorge is that the body itself is actually starved, instead of being feasted. If when your natural appetite for food is satisfied, and your enjoyment and relish of it have ceased, you have rich and high flavored dishes set before you, the high-flavors will then still prove agreeable to the palate, and act upon it as a sort of excitement, and the natural appetite will have its work superseded by a false and artificial one, and you will go on eating under this temptation, until your stomach is over-crammed. All the so-called luxuries of cooking are merely devices to make men eat more, who have already eaten enough.

But when men who have already eaten enough, eat more, what must happen? one of two things—either the stomach, being particularly vigorous, will get through an extra amount of work; then there will be more blood sent into the supply pipes than the body requires, and the frame will be everywhere stuffed and oppressed with the load, to the danger of inflammations, rheumatism, and other like disorders being set up: or the stomach will be unequal to the task of doing extra work; then the food which can not be digested will decay and putrify in the stomach and bowels, producing there all sorts of poison vapors and disagreeable products, which will lead to stomach and bowel disorders, until nature, or the doctor, finds some way for their removal, or until something worse takes place.

Thrice favored is he who is not daily exposed to the dangers of a luxurious table. Money, after all, is not in itself a blessing. It is only a blessing when it is possessed by those who know how to employ it for good purposes. In the hands of men who do not know how to employ it so, it often proves to be a curse.

Food which is already in a state of commencing putrefaction or decay, is always dangerous for this reason: it forms poison vapors and injurious products in the stomach, before its digestion can be completed in the natural way. If, however, meat about to be used is at any time found to be tainted, it will be at once rendered wholesome, if the most tainted part be cut away, the cut part being rubbed with a piece of charcoal, and the joint be then well boiled in water, in which a piece of charcoal has been placed.

Here, then, in conclusion, are two or three golden rules for the management of your feeding:

Never have any but the plainest and simplest food placed before you when you are hungry, whether you be rich or whether you be poor.

Eat of it until you find the relish for it disappearing.

There stop, and on no consideration swallow another mouthful, until the sense of appetite and relish comes back to you.

Discourtesy does not spring merely from one bad quality of the mind, but from several, from foolish vanity, from ignorance of what is due to others, from indolence, from stupidity, from distraction of thought, from contempt of others, from jealousy; not to dwell on anything but what is seen outwardly, it is only the more hateful from being a defect of mind always visible, and palpable; it is true, however, that it is more or less offensive according to the quality that produces it.—La Bruyère.

[A PETITION TO TIME.]

By B. W. PROCTOR.

Touch us gently, Time!

Let us glide adown thy stream

Gently,—as we sometimes glide

Through a quiet dream!

Humble voyagers are we,

Husband, wife, and children three—

(One is lost,—an angel, fled

To the azure overhead!)

Touch us gently, Time!

We’ve not proud nor soaring wings:

Our ambition, our content

Lies in simple things.

Humble voyagers are we,

O’er Life’s dim unsounded sea,

Seeking only some calm clime:—

Touch us gently, gentle Time!

[A DREAM, AND PRACTICAL LIFE.]

By GOETHE and ECKERMANN.

March 12, 1828.—After I had quitted Goethe yesterday evening, the important conversation I had carried on with him remained constantly in my mind. The discourse had also been upon the sea and sea air; and Goethe had expressed the opinion that he considered all islanders and inhabitants of the sea-shore in temperate climates far more productive, and possessed of more active force, than the people in the interior of large continents.

Whether or not it was that I had fallen asleep with these thoughts, and with a certain longing for the inspiring powers of the sea; suffice it to say, I had in the night the following pleasant, and to me very remarkable dream:

I saw myself in an unknown region, amongst strange men, thoroughly cheerful and happy. The most beautiful summer day surrounded me in a charming scene, such as might be witnessed somewhere on the shores of the Mediterranean, in the south of Spain or France, or in the neighborhood of Genoa. We had been drinking at noon round a merry table, and I went with some others, rather young people, to make another party for the afternoon.

We had loitered along through bushy and pleasant low lands, when we suddenly found ourselves in the sea, upon the smallest of islands, on a jutting rock, where there was scarcely room for five or six men, and where one could not stir for fear of slipping into the water. Behind us, whence we had come, there was nothing to be seen but sea; but before us lay the shore at about a quarter of an hour’s distance, spread out most invitingly. The shore was in some places flat, in others rocky and somewhat elevated; and one might observe between green leaves and white tents, a crowd of joyous men, in light-colored clothes, recreating themselves with music, which sounded from the tents. “There is nothing else to be done,” said one of us to the other, “we must undress and swim over.” “It is all very well to say so,” said I, “you are young, handsome fellows, and good swimmers; but I swim badly, and I do not possess a shape fine enough to appear, with pleasure and comfort, before the strange people on shore.” “You are a fool,” said one of the handsomest, “undress yourself, give me your form, and you shall have mine.” At these words I undressed myself quickly, and was soon in the water, and immediately found myself in the body of the other as a powerful swimmer. I soon reached the shore, and, naked, and dripping, stepped with the most easy confidence amongst the men. I was happy in the sensation of these fine limbs; my deportment was unconstrained, and I at once became intimate with the strangers, at a table before an arbor, where there was a great deal of mirth. My comrades had now reached land one by one, and had joined us, and the only one missing was the youth with my form, in whose limbs I found myself so comfortable. At last he also approached the shore, and I was asked if I was not glad to see my former self? At these words I experienced a certain discomfort, partly because I did not expect any great joy from myself, and partly because I feared my young friend would ask for his own body back again. However, I turned to the water, and saw my second self swimming close up to me, and laughing at me with his head turned a little on one side. “There is no swimming with those limbs of yours,” exclaimed he, “I have had a fine struggle against waves and breakers, and it is not to be wondered at that I have come so late, and am last of all.” I at once recognized the countenance; it was my own, but grown young, and rather fuller and broader, with the freshest complexion. He now came to land, and whilst he raised himself and first stepped along the sand, I had a view of his back and legs, and was delighted with the perfection of the form. He came up the rocky shore to us, and as he came up to me he had completely my new stature. “How is it,” thought I to myself, “that your little body has grown so handsome. Have the primeval powers of the sea operated so wonderfully upon it, or is it because the youthful spirit of my friend has penetrated the limbs?” Whilst we enjoyed ourselves together for some time, I silently wondered that my friend did not show any inclination to resume his own body. “Truly,” thought I, “he looks bravely, and it may be a matter of indifference to him in which body he is placed, but it is not the same thing to me; for I am not sure whether in that body I may not shrink and become as diminutive as before.” In order to satisfy myself on this point, I took my friend aside, and asked him how he felt in my limbs? “Perfectly well,” said he; “I have the same sensation of my own natural power as before; I do not know what you have to complain of in your limbs. They are quite right with me; and you see one only has to make the best of oneself. Remain in my body as long as you please; for I am perfectly contented to remain in yours through all futurity.” I was much pleased by this explanation, and as in all my sensations, thoughts, and recollections, I felt quite as usual, my dream gave me the impression of a perfect independence of the soul, and the possibility of a future existence in another body.

“That is a very pretty dream,” said Goethe, when, after dinner to-day, I imparted to him the principal features. “We see,” continued he, “that the muses visit you even in sleep, and, indeed, with particular favor; for you must confess that it would be difficult for you to invent anything so peculiar and pretty in your waking moments.”

“I can scarcely conceive how it happened to me,” returned I; “for I had felt so dejected all day, that the contemplation of so fresh a life was far from my mind.”

“Human nature possesses wonderful powers,” returned Goethe, “and has something good in readiness for us when we least hope for it. There have been times in my life when I have fallen asleep in tears; but in my dreams the most charming forms have come to console and to cheer me, and I have risen the next morning fresh and joyful.

“There is something more or less wrong among us old Europeans; our relations are far too artificial and complicated, our nutriment and mode of life are without their proper nature, and our social intercourse is without proper love and good will. Every one is polished and courteous; but no one has the courage to be hearty and true, so that an honest man, with natural views and feelings, stands in a very bad position. Often one can not help wishing that one had been born upon one of the South Sea Islands, a so-called savage, so as to have thoroughly enjoyed human existence in all its purity, without any adulteration.

“If in a depressed mood one reflects deeply upon the wretchedness of our age, it often occurs to one that the world is gradually approaching the last day. And the evil accumulates from generation to generation! For it is not enough that we have to suffer for the sins of our fathers, but we hand down to posterity these inherited vices increased by our own.”

“Similar thoughts often occur to me,” answered I; “but if, at such a time, I see a regiment of German dragoons ride by me, and observe the beauty and power of these young people, I again derive some consolation, and say to myself, that the durability of mankind is after all not in such a desperate plight.”

“Our country people,” returned Goethe, “have certainly kept up their strength, and will, I hope, long be able not only to furnish us with good horsemen, but also to secure us from total decay and destruction. The rural population may be regarded as a magazine, from which the forces of declining mankind are always recruited and refreshed. But just go into our great towns, and you will feel quite differently. Just take a turn by the side of a second diable boiteux, or a physician with a large practice, and he will whisper to you tales which will horrify you at the misery, and astonish you at the vice with which human nature is visited, and from which society suffers.

“But let us banish these hypochondriacal thoughts. How are you going on? What are you doing? What else have you seen to-day? Tell me, and inspire me with good thoughts.”

“I have been reading Sterne,” returned I, “where Yorick is sauntering about the streets of Paris, and makes the remark that every tenth man is a dwarf. I thought of that when you mentioned the vices of great towns. I also remember to have seen, in Napoleon’s time, among the French infantry, one battalion which consisted entirely of Parisians, who were all such puny, diminutive people, that one could not comprehend what could be done with them in battle.”

“The Scotch Highlanders, under the Duke of Wellington,” rejoined Goethe, “were doubtless heroes of another description.”

“I saw them in Brussels a year before the battle of Waterloo,” returned I. “They were, indeed, fine men; all strong, fresh, and active, as if just from the hand of their Maker. They all carried their heads so freely and gallantly, and stepped so lightly along with their strong, bare legs, that it seemed as if there were no original sin, and no ancestral failing, as far as they were concerned.”

“There is something peculiar in this,” said Goethe. “Whether it lies in the race, in the soil, in the free political constitution, or in the healthy tone of education,—certainly, the English in general appear to have certain advantages over many others. Here in Weimar, we see only a few of them, and, probably, by no means the best; but what fine, handsome people they are. And however young they come here, they feel themselves by no means strange or embarrassed in this foreign atmosphere; on the contrary, their deportment in society is as full of confidence, and as easy as if they were lords everywhere, and the whole world belonged to them. This it is which pleases our women, and by which they make such havoc in the hearts of our young ladies. As a German father of a family, who is concerned for the tranquility of his household, I often feel a slight shudder, when my daughter-in-law announces to me the expected arrival of some fresh, young islander. I already see in my mind’s eye the tears which will one day flow when he takes his departure. They are dangerous young people; but this very quality of being dangerous is their virtue.”

“Still, I would not assert,” answered I, “that the young Englishmen in Weimar are more clever, more intelligent, better informed, or more excellent at heart than other people.”

“The secret does not lie in these things, my good friend,” returned Goethe. “Neither does it lie in birth and riches; it lies in the courage which they have to be that for which nature has made them. There is nothing vitiated or spoilt about them, there is nothing half-way or crooked; but such as they are, they are thoroughly complete men. That they are also sometimes complete fools, I allow with all my heart; but that is still something, and has still always some weight in the scale of nature.

“The happiness of personal freedom, the consciousness of an English name, and of the importance attached to it by other nations, is an advantage even to the children; for in their own family, as well as in scholastic establishments, they are treated with far more respect, and enjoy a far freer development, than is the case with us Germans.

“In our own dear Weimar, I need only to look out of the window to discover how matters stand with us. Lately, when the snow was lying upon the ground, and my neighbor’s children were trying their little sledges in the street, the police was immediately at hand, and I saw the poor little things fly as quickly as they could. Now, when the spring sun tempts them from the houses, and they would like to play with their companions before the door, I see them always constrained, as if they were not safe, and feared the approach of some despot of the police. Not a boy may crack a whip, or sing or shout; the police is immediately at hand to forbid it. This has the effect with us all of taming youth prematurely, and of driving out all originality and all wildness, so that in the end nothing remains but the Philistine.

“You know that scarcely a day passes in which I am not visited by some traveling foreigner. But if I were to say that I took great pleasure in the personal appearance, especially of young, learned Germans from a certain northeastern quarter, I should tell a falsehood.

“Short-sighted, pale, narrow-chested, young without youth; that is a picture of most of them as they appear to me. And if I enter into a conversation with any of them, I immediately observe that the things in which one of us takes pleasure seem to them vain and trivial, that they are entirely absorbed in the Idea, and that only the highest problems of speculation are fitted to interest them. Of sound senses or delight in the sensual, there is no trace; all youthful feeling and all youthful pleasure are driven out of them, and that irrecoverably; for if a man is not young in his twentieth year, how can he be so in his fortieth?”

Goethe sighed and was silent.

I thought of the happy time in the last century, in which Goethe’s youth fell; the summer air of Sesenheim passed before my soul, and I reminded him of the verses—

In the afternoon we sat,

Young people, in the cool.

“Ah,” sighed Goethe, “those were, indeed, happy times. But we will drive them from our minds, that the dark foggy days of the present may not become quite insupportable.”

“A second Redeemer,” said I, “would be required to remove from us the seriousness, the discomfort, and the monstrous oppressiveness of the present state of things.”

“If he came,” answered Goethe, “he would be crucified a second time. Still, we by no means need anything so great. If we could only alter the Germans after the model of the English, if we could only have less philosophy and more power of action, less theory and more practice, we might obtain a good share of redemption, without waiting for the personal majesty of a second Christ. Much may be done from below by the people by means of schools and domestic education; much from above by the rulers and those in immediate connection with them.

“Thus, for instance, I can not approve the requisition, in the studies of future statesmen, of so much theoretically-learned knowledge, by which young people are ruined before their time, both in mind and body. When they enter into practical service, they possess, indeed, an immense stock of philosophical and learned matters; but in the narrow circle of their calling, this can not be practically applied, and must therefore be forgotten as useless. On the other hand, what they most needed they have lost; they are deficient in the necessary mental and bodily energy, which is quite indispensable when one would enter properly into practical life.

“And then, are not love and benevolence also needed in the life of a statesman—in the management of men? And how can any one feel and exercise benevolence toward another, when he is ill at ease with himself?

“But all these people are in a dreadfully bad case. The third part of the learned men and statesmen, shackled to the desk, are ruined in body, and consigned to the demon of hypochondria. Here there should be action from above that future generations may at least be preserved from a like destruction.

“In the meantime,” continued Goethe, smiling, “let us remain in a state of hopeful expectation as to the condition of us Germans a century hence, and whether we shall then have advanced so far as to be no longer savants and philosophers, but men.”

Now, it has occurred to me, when I recollect, that we love our children, and call them our second selves, merely because we have begotten them, that there is another kind of progeny springing from us, not less worthy of our esteem; for what we engender by the mind, the offspring of our understanding, diligence, and genius, emanates from nobler parts of us than what springs from the body, and is much more our own. We are both father and mother in this act of generation. They cost us more and bring us more honor if they have any good in them. For the value of our other children depends much more on themselves than on us; the share we have in them is very little, but of these all the beauty, grace, and excellence is ours. For in this way they are a more complete representation and copy of ourselves than the others. Plato adds that these are immortal children which truly immortalize and deify their fathers, as Lycurgus, Solon, and Mino.—Montaigne.

So Spencer, “F. Q.,” v. 1:

“The noble heart that harbors virtuous thought,

And is with child of glorious, great intent,

Can never rest until it forth have brought

Th’ eternal brood of glory excellent.”

In my opinion the want of occupation is no less the plague of society than of solitude. Nothing is so apt to narrow the mind; nothing produces more trifling, silly stories, mischief-making, lies, than being eternally shut up in a room with one another, reduced as the only alternative to be constantly twaddling. When everybody is occupied, we only speak when we have something to say; but when we are doing nothing, we are compelled to be always talking, and of all torments, that is the most annoying and the most dangerous.—Rousseau.

[TALES FROM SHAKSPERE.]

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By CHARLES LAMB.

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