TABLE TOPICS.
"The wanton taste no flesh nor fowl can choose,
For which the grape or melon it would lose,
Though all th' inhabitants of earth and air
Be listed in the glutton's bill of fare."—Cowley.
Jean Jacques Rousseau holds that intemperate habits are mostly acquired in early boyhood, when blind deference to social precedents is apt to overcome our natural antipathies, and that those who have passed that period in safety, have generally escaped the danger of temptation. The same holds good of other dietetic abuses. If a child's natural aversion to vice has never been wilfully perverted, the time will come when his welfare may be intrusted to the safe-keeping of his protective instincts. You need not fear that he will swerve from the path of health when his simple habits, sanctioned by nature and inclination, have acquired the additional strength of long practice. When the age of blind deference is past, vice is generally too unattractive to be very dangerous.—Oswald.
That a child inherits certain likes and dislikes in the matter of food cannot be questioned, and does not in the least forbid the training of the child's taste toward that which is healthful and upbuilding; it merely adds an element to be considered in the training.—Sel.
Prevention is better than cure. It is worth a life effort to lift a man from degradation. To prevent his fall is better.—Gough.
A cynical French writer of the last century intending a satire upon the principles of vegetarianism adopted by Phillippe Hecquet, puts into the mouth of one of the characters in his book what, in the grossly voluptuous life of that country and time, the author no doubt imagined to be the greatest absurdities conceivable in reference to diet, but which, in the light of present civilization are but the merest hygienic truths. A doctor had been called to a gouty and fever-stricken patient. "Pray what is your ordinary diet?" asked the physician.
"My usual food," replied the patient, "is broth and juicy meat."
"Broth and juicy meat!" cried the doctor, alarmed. "I do not wonder to find you sick; such dishes are poisoned pleasures and snares that luxury spreads for mankind, so as to ruin them the more effectually.... How old are you, pray?"
"I am in my sixty-ninth year," replied the patient.