TABLE TOPICS.
The men who kept alive the flame of learning and piety in the Middle Ages were mainly vegetarians.—Sir William Axon.
According to Xenophon, Cyrus, king of Persia, was brought up on a diet of water, bread, and cresses, till his fifteenth year, when honey and raisins were added; and the family names of Fabii and Lentuli were derived from their customary diet.
Thomson, in his poem, "The Seasons," written one hundred and sixty years ago, pays the following tribute to a diet composed of seeds and vegetable products:—
"With such a liberal hand has Nature flung
These seeds abroad, blown them about in winds— ...
But who their virtues can declare? who pierce,
With vision pure, into those secret stores
Of health and life and joy—the food of man,
While yet he lived in innocence and told
A length of golden years, unfleshed in blood?
A stranger to the savage arts of life—
Death, rapine, carnage, surfeit, and disease—
The lord, and not the tyrant of the world."
Most assuredly I do believe that body and mind are much influenced by the kind of food habitually depended upon. I can never stray among the village people of our windy capes without now and then coming upon a human being who looks as if he had been split, salted, and dried, like the salt fish which has built up his arid organism. If the body is modified by the food which nourishes it, the mind and character very certainly will be modified by it also. We know enough of their close connection with each other to be sure of what without any statistical observation to prove it.—Oliver Wendell Holmes.
The thoughts and feelings which the food we partake of provokes, are not remarked in common life, but they, nevertheless, have their significance. A man who daily sees cows and calves slaughtered, or who kills them himself, hogs "stuck," hens "plucked," etc., cannot possibly retain any true feeling for the sufferings of his own species....Doubtless, the majority of flesh-eaters do not reflect upon the manner in which this food comes to them, but this thoughtlessness, far from being a virtue, is the parent of many vices....How very different are the thoughts and sentiments produced by the non-flesh diet!—Gustav Von Struve.
That the popular idea that beef is necessary for strength is not a correct one, is well illustrated by Xenophon's description of the outfit of a Spartan soldier, whose dietary consisted of the very plainest and simplest vegetable fare. The complete accoutrements of the Spartan soldier, in what we would call heavy marching order, weighed seventy-five pounds, exclusive of the camp, mining, and bridge-building tools and the rations of bread and dried fruit which were issued in weekly installments, and increased the burden of the infantry soldier to ninety, ninety-five, or even to a full hundred pounds. This load was often carried at the rate of four miles an hour for twelve hours per diem, day after day, and only when in the burning deserts of southern Syria did the commander of the Grecian auxiliaries think prudent to shorten the usual length of the day's march.
DIET OF TRAINERS.—The following are a few of the restrictions and rules laid down by experienced trainers:—
Little salt. No course vegetables. No pork or veal. Two meals a day; breakfast at eight and dinner at two. No fat meat is allowed, no butter or cheese, pies or pastry.
