That Eurasian

by Aleph Bey

On whom, as in despite, the sun looks pale,

Killing their fruit with frowns?”

I am a great believer in climate and food in the making of men. A man is what he eats, and, according to the climate he lives in, robust or feeble. Go from the Arctic or colder regions, toward the equator, and every few hundred miles there can be seen a physical degeneracy of mankind, and the mental qualities must also be affected. Italy is an approach to India, and Egypt more so. The ready memorizing people of tropical Bengal are as exuberant as the vegetation around them, and like the vegetation, they are watery, without strength or firmness. How different from the sturdy hardwood forests of the north and its hardy, brave people! Take a Hindu, a Bengali, with his slender worm-like fingers, and transplant him to Norway. What would he do with an axe trying to fell a sturdy pine? It would be a sight worth going to see. What would those rice-eaters do in stemming the stormy blasts of a northern winter? I once saw a fight in the streets of London, of men with brawny arms, and fists that came with sledgehammer force upon each other! Some day, when I can get leisure, I am going to write an article on fists, and the people who can make them. There is so much of human character in a fist.

I never saw a native of India make up a fist for a fight. When they do not attack each other with their tongues, at which they are experts, the bamboo lathi, native to the climate, is their natural weapon, and then it is not a face to face, but a behind the back attack, a sure sign of weakness and cowardice. I am an admirer of the Anglo-Saxon in the English in this, that they have such a steady, stolid pugnacity, never knowing when they are whipped, and fight for what they think is right till there are none left to fight; always keep their backs behind them and their faces toward their foes, and it never need be asked of them when they return from battle, “Have they their wounds in front?”

Take another country. Where would the grim theology, philosophy and metaphysics of the German people be without their cold, sluggish climate, the black rye bread, the beer, the rank cheese, the sauerkraut, the sausages, and everlasting pipe? It is a wonder they can think at all, so clogged and befuddled their minds must be, and the results of their thinking is just what might be expected, heavy and cloggy. We went to Germany, and it was among her people that I got this impression.

We spent most of our time, nearly a year, in France, that paradise of the world, neither too hot nor too cold, and would ever have remained there if possible; the land of bright skies, of fruit and flowers, with its happy, contented, courteous people. Better a dinner of herbs in France, with its sunshine, than roast beef in England and fog therewith. No wonder that the French think so little about heaven when they have such a beautiful country to live in on earth.

What shall I say of the lively, entertaining, vivacious, polite people? They were another kind of human animal, altogether different from any that I had met. They are native to their own climate, light and airy. We were constantly reminded that we were in a land of epicures, among a people of good taste, for whom exquisite cooking was a necessity as well as a pleasure. I could well understand the remark of a Frenchman about England, as a country of a hundred religions and not one good soup.

It may be heathenish in me, but I have always had a liking for good food, probably because there was such a fearful lack of it to me as a child. In the first part of our lives we are mostly growing animals, and think more of provender than we do of piety, or many other good things. I might have swallowed the Athanasian creed, and all like it at school, if only our grub had been a little more palatable. I recall Mr. Jasper’s remark that the boys in his father’s family were more obedient, and so more religious, because of the good Sunday dinners the mother gave them. I also remember that my villagers were very indifferent about the improvements I suggested, or to anything I told them, until they got enough to eat, and then I could have led them with a hair. But I am wandering again.

I do not wonder that the sea-girt isle envies France the richness of her possessions and the prosperity and happiness of her people, yet I cannot understand why she should antagonize her and carp at everything she does, except it is in the nature of an Englishman to do so. He tries to speak French but fails egregiously. The attempt of a grumpy Englishman who speaks his own language as if he was afflicted with chronic catarrh trying to use that sprightly spirited tongue, is as grotesque as it would be to see an elephant trying a sword dance. Some one has said that if he spoke to God it would be in Spanish, to his mistress in Italian, to angels in French, to butchers in English and to hogs in German. I am not scholar enough to discuss this statement, yet I think he is correct in regard to French and English.

Not only in their cookery, but in their homes, the French have fine taste. They are great admirers of the beautiful in art, and cultivate it in nature, even among the poor. As to their dress, especially of the women, even the servant girls, however cheap the material, had their clothing fitted with such grace that they might have stood as fashion models for the rest of the world. But as I am only an outside barbarian I may be mistaken. I can only tell of the way it appeared to me.