It is a certain fact, although difficult to prove by statistics, that a large proportion of the drink consumed by the working-classes is directly due to the bad cooking which they have to endure in their homes. Improve the workman’s cuisine, and you will automatically lessen the drink bill. This is a point of view which philanthropists and temperance folk might adopt with immense advantage, and with practically immediate results.
Dr. Max Einhorn has recently written on the subject of correct eating, which he divides into three distinct headings: Tachyphagia, Bradyphagia, and Euphagia. The first of these is the common evil of hasty eating, in which the food is not sufficiently masticated, and hence enters the stomach without being properly insalivated and comminuted. Besides the deleterious mechanical effect, tachyphagia also encourages the taking of large quantities of food in too short a time, as well as its consumption too hot or too cold.
The rising generation is going to fight tachyphagia tooth and nail—especially tooth. It is being taught wisely and well by the disciples of the Cookery and Food Association how to improve the family digestion, and there is an old saying to the effect that digestion is the business of the cook, indigestion that of the doctor. It cannot be too often or too forcibly impressed upon the so-called working-classes, and upon a good many other classes of society also, that good cooking does not mean waste and extravagance, but, on the contrary, that it connotes economy and frugality. A daughter who can cook well is tantamount to possessing a Savings-Bank account.
Are you a Euphagist? Perhaps, like the immortal M. Jourdain, of Molière, you may have been one all your life—and never knew it. Anyhow, it is a question which is being bandied about at dinners just now a good deal, and as very few people know what a Euphagist really is, it may be as well to explain. Briefly then, Euphagists are the modern exponents of the old adage, “Laugh and grow fat.” As a sect, or a race, or a cult, or whatever they may please to call themselves, they refuse to take anything seriously at meal-times, which is an entirely sound and philosophical theory.
The learned German professor above referred to is the inventor, or discoverer, or resuscitator of the idea, and his doctrine is summed up in the brief instruction: Bite everything twenty times, don’t worry whilst eating, laugh at everything—and acquire sound health. After all, it is a tried truism that there is no digestive as efficacious as hearty laughter. A solemn diner, especially if he dine often alone, is almost invariably dyspeptic; whereas a bright, cheery man or woman, who has a keen sense of humour, and sees the comic side of most things, is rarely a sufferer from indigestion. “Even our digestion is governed by angels,” said William Blake, the artist-poet, and (if you will but resist the trivial inclination to substitute “bad angels”) is there really any greater mystery than the process by which beef is turned into brains, and jam into beauty?
Of course we do not laugh enough—at the utmost we giggle unmusically. Listen to the conversation in general at any restaurant, or even any dinner party; you will rarely hear a really hearty laugh. It is as extinct as silver épergnes or peacock-pie.
It is told of an American dining at the Carlton one night that, struck by the comparative silence of all the diners, he asked one of the waiters: “Say, does nobody ever laugh here?” The reply came pat enough: “Yes, sir, I believe there have been one or two complaints about it lately.” Are we too solemn, or too dull, or too afraid of shocking our neighbours?
It was not always so. According to that delightful work, “The Household of Sir Thomas More”: “What rare sport we had with a mummery we called ‘The Triall of Feasting.’ Dinner and Supper were brought up before my Lord Chief Justice, charg’d with Murder. Their accomplices were Plum-pudding, Mince-Pye, Drunkenness, and such-like. Being condemned to hang by ye neck, I, who was Supper, stuft out with I cannot tell you how manie pillows, began to call lustilie for a confessor, and on his stepping forthe, commenct a list of all ye fitts, convulsions, spasms, payns in ye head, and so forthe, I had inflicted on this one and t’other.”
In those days, no doubt, they did not require to adopt the tenets of Euphagism, they were well enough without it. To-day, however, as a change, and a delightful one too, from the hundred and one food-fads which abound, a general adoption of Euphagism would seem to promise brighter meals, more fun, and better health.
Among other aids to digestion which are flagrantly neglected is the taking of one’s food in the open air whenever the thermometrical conditions of our somewhat erratic climate render it possible.