“————Panis
Latrantem stomachum bene leniet.”
If your hunger would disdain a piece of dry bread, it certainly has no claim to be attended to at all. You say that you can afford to indulge yourself in the delicacies to which I have alluded. I do not think that you can; at all events, your money may be more worthily spent—
“Non est melius quo insumere possis?
Cur eget indignus quisquam, te divite? Quare
Templa ruunt antiqua Deûm?”
In other words, if you have the money to spare, give it to the deserving poor, or to the Church-building Society. Few expenses are more unsatisfactory in retrospect,—I had almost said, more disgraceful,—than those which have been incurred by sensual self-indulgence; incurred to gratify a vitiated palate and a pampered appetite.
Self-denial is recommended by the classical writers of antiquity, as well as by the most sensible of modern authors; and, what is of infinitely more importance, is strongly inculcated by the Christian religion. But how shall self-denial be practised at all, if it cannot be practised in the low matter of eating and drinking?
Read again and again the paper of Addison, and the Satire of Horace, (the second of the second Book), from which I have made my quotations. Read also the following passages from that accurate observer of the habits and manners of social life, the son of Sirach:
If thou sit at a bountiful table, be not greedy upon it, and say not, There is much meat on it.—Eat, as it becometh a man, those things that are set before thee; and devour not, lest thou be hated. Leave off first for manners’ sake; and be not insatiable, lest thou offend.
A very little is sufficient for a man well nurtured, and he fetcheth not his wind short upon his bed.
Sound sleep cometh of moderate eating; he riseth early, and his wits are with him: but the pain of watching, and choler, and pangs of the belly, are with an insatiable man.
I remain,
My dear Nephew,
Your affectionate Uncle.