“Well, I wouldn’t like to marry the whole regiment, or staff, but I’d as lief have the old general as any of them.”
XXII.
GLUTTONS AND WINE-BIBBERS.
| “Full well he knew, where food does not refresh, The shrivelled soul sinks inward with the flesh; That he’s best armed for danger’s rash career, Who’s crammed so full there is no room for fear.” “Strange! that a creature rational, and cast In human mould, should brutalize by choice His nature.”—Cowper. |
GOOD CHEER AND A CHEERFUL HEART.—A MODERN SILENUS.—A SAD WRECK.—DELIRIUM TREMENS.—FATAL ERRORS.—“EATING LIKE A GLUTTON.”—STRENGTH IN WEAKNESS.—A HOT PLACE, EVEN FOR A COOK.—A HUNGRY DOCTOR.—THE MODERN GILPIN.—A CHANGE! A SOW FOR A HORSE!—A DUCK POND.—THE FORLORN WIDOW.—A SCIENTIFIC GORMAND.—ANOTHER.—“DOORN’T GO TO ’IM,” ETC.—DR. BUTLER’S BEER AND BATH.—CASTS HIS LAST VOTE.
If I confine this chapter to modern physicians, it will be brief. Though doctors are usually pretty good livers, they, at this day of the world, too well know the deadly properties of the villanous concoctions sold as liquors to risk much of it in their own systems.
There is a whole sermon on eating in our first text above, and, while we admit that gluttony is reprehensible, we detest “the shrivelled soul” who starves wittingly his body to heap up riches, or under the idle delusion of starving out disease, or “mortifying the flesh.” If not very “mortifying,” it is very depressing, to be bored by one of these “lean, lank hypochondriacs,”—to have to entertain, or be entertained by, such. O, give me the wide-mouthed, the round-faced, or abdomened, the cheerful, laughing man, especially if he’s a doctor.