"Brown bread and apples!" exclaimed Mrs. Royden, in surprise. "Who ever heard of apples for breakfast?"
"I never feel so well as when I make them a large proportion of my food," replied the clergyman. "People commit a great error when they use fruits only as luxuries. They are our most simple, natural and healthful food."
"You have never worked on a farm, I see," observed Mr. Royden.
"I understand you,"—and the old man, perhaps to illustrate his liberal views, ate a piece of fried bacon with evident relish. "Different natures and different conditions of men certainly demand different systems of diets. If a man has animal strength to support, let him use animal food. But meat is not the best stimulus to the brain. With regard to vegetables, my experience teaches that they are beautifully adapted to our habits of life. Let the man who digs beneath the soil consume the food he finds there. But I will pluck the grape or the peach as I walk, and, eating, find myself refreshed."
"That is a rather poetical thought," remarked Chester. "But I doubt if it be sound philosophy."
"Oh, I ask no one to accept any theory of my own," answered the old man, benignly. "If I talk reason, consider my words; if not,"—smiling significantly, with an expressive gesture,—"let the wind have them."
"But I think your ideas very interesting," said Sarah. "What do you think of bread?"
"It is the staff of life. The lower vegetable productions are suited to the grosser natures of men. Those brought forth in the sunlight are more suitable to finer organizations. I place grains as much higher than roots, on a philosophical scale, as the ear of corn is higher than the potato, in a literal sense. Therefore, as grain grows midway between vegetables and fruits, it appears to be wisely designed as the great staple of food. But the nearer heaven the more spiritual. If I am to compose a sermon, let me make a dinner of nuts that have ripened in the broad sunlight, of apples that grow on the highest boughs of the orchard, and of grapes that are found sweetest on the tops of the vines."
"Very beautiful in theory," said Chester.
"When you have studied the subject, perhaps you will find some grains of truth in the chaff," replied the clergyman, with a genial smile.