Children who have learnt nothing may laugh at all this, but you, my dear, are beginning to know something, and "science constrains," i.e. it has its claims and requirements. It requires you, to-day, not to be greedy, to-morrow, something else, and so on, continually, until you have become quite reasonable and wise. I am sorry for you if this vexes you, but it was your own wish to learn, and science constrains. Indeed, I will whisper to you in confidence that this is the best excuse people who are unwilling to learn have to offer for refusing. They do not know what learning may lead to, and what a pity it would be if they could no longer be greedy, or ill-natured, or selfish. What would become of us all in such a case?
LETTER IX.
THE STOMACH—(continued).
We made a very long story of the stomach last time, my dear child; and, after all, I see that there was one thing I forgot to tell you—viz., what it is like.
Have you ever seen a bagpiper, I wonder? A man who carries under his arm a kind of large dark brown bag, which he fills with air by blowing into it, and out of which he presently forces the same air into a musical pipe by pressing it gently with his elbow. If you never saw such a thing, it is a pity; first, because the bagpipe was the national instrument of our ancestors the Gauls, and is religiously preserved as such by the Scotch Highlanders and the peasants of Brittany—(two remnants of that illustrious race, whose history I recommend to your careful perusal some day); secondly, and it is this fact which has the greatest interest for us just now, because that large bag, which is the principal part of the instrument, gives you a very exact idea of your stomach; for in fact it really and truly is a stomach itself, and moreover, the stomach of an animal whose interior formation resembles yours very, very much.
And who do you suppose is this audacious animal, which presumes to have an inside so like that of a pretty little girl? Really, I am half ashamed to name him, for fear you should be angry with me for doing so. It is—it is the pig! The resemblance is not exactly a flattering one to you, perhaps, but we are all alike, and it would be worse than foolish to grumble at being created as we are. Moreover, there is one difference; the pig, who thinks of nothing but eating, has a very much larger stomach than we have, which is some consolation, at any rate.
Place the palm of your right hand on what is called the pit of the stomach, turning the ends of the fingers towards the heart; your hand will nearly cover the space usually occupied by the stomach, and you may figure it to yourself as a rounded and elongated bag, bigger above than below, making a very decided bend inside as it descends from the heart downward; something like one of those long French pears, called "Bon-chretiens," if it were bent in the middle, and the big end of it were placed next the heart. As for the exact size of the bag, there is no telling it, for it depends upon circumstances. It is a very convenient bag in that respect; just such a one as you would like to have in your frock for a pocket; only there would be a danger of your being tempted to put too many things into it. For as you fill it, it expands, and enlarges itself like an indian-rubber ball, which, though only the size of an egg to begin with, becomes as big as your head if you blow hard into it. Then, as it gets empty, it recovers itself, diminishing gradually in size in plait-like contractions.
When people remain too long without eating, they have, as they say, twinges in the stomach. This is because the stomach, becoming by degrees quite empty, and contracting more and more, the surrounding parts which were sustained by it, lose their support, and strain at their ligaments, which now have all the weight to bear. Careless people, who do not think of such things, are reminded by the twinging pains that it is time to eat, just as a careless servant is called to order by the bell of which his master has pulled the string.
In your case, my dear child, such warnings are soon attended to, and you have not always even to wait till they come. But there are hundreds of miserable beings who are warned to no purpose, who cannot obey the master when he calls for his rations, because they have nothing to give him; and when this forced disobedience lasts too long, they end by dying of it. In cases like these, when human beings thus cruelly perish, the stomach is found to be contracted till it is scarcely bigger than one's finger.
On the other hand, a man once died suffocated from excess of food, after one of those great public dinners, which last four, six, or more hours—one can scarcely say correctly how long—and the doctors who examined him found his stomach so prodigiously enlarged that it alone occupied more than one-half of his inside. As you perceive, therefore, the stomach has, properly speaking, no fixed size. Its size depends upon what there is in it. It is like those men whose manners go up and down with their fortunes; who seem very grand people when their pockets are well filled, but become very small ones when their purses are empty. There is, nevertheless, this difference between them, that such men are fools, because they are men, and not bags; whereas the stomach is a sensible bag, fulfilling with intelligence the duties of its character as a bag. It is very fortunate for us that it is ready to change its size, according to the caprices of our appetite; and dressmakers would do well if they could get a hint from it how to improve their style of pockets, which certainly cannot have cost their inventors any very great effort of imagination!