——"Mind and Body are so close combined,
Where Health of Body, Health of Mind you find."
Preserve, then, as you value the means of usefulness, the perfect play of your mental powers—so easily trammelled by the clogging of the machinery of the body—the unadulterated taste that is content with a sufficiency of wholesome, well-cooked food to satisfy the demands of healthful appetite. Cultivate no love of condiments, sauces and stimulants; indulge no ambition to excel in dressing salads, classifying ragouts, or in demonstrating, down to the nicety of a single ingredient, the distinction between a home-made and an imported pâté de foie gras! Distinctions such as these may suffice for the worn-out society of a corrupt civilization, but our countrymen—MEN—should shout Excelsior!
Abstract rules in relations to the hours proper for taking meals, however carefully adapted to the security of health, in themselves considered, must, of necessity, give place to those artificially imposed by custom and convenience. Thus, though the practice of dining late is not sanctioned by Hygeia, it admits of question, whether, as the usages of the business-world at present exists, it is not a wiser custom than any other permitted by circumstance.
All who have given any attention to the subject know, that neither bodily nor mental labor can be either comfortably or successfully pursued directly after a full meal. Hence, then, those whose occupations require their attention during several successive hours, may find the habit of dining after the more imperative labors of the day are accomplished, most conducive to health as well as convenience.
Still, it should not be forgotten, that long abstinence is likely to produce the exhaustion that tells so surely and seriously upon the constitution, of young persons especially. This may be prevented by taking, systematically, a little light, simple nutriment, sufficient to produce what is aptly termed the stimulus of distention in that much abused organ—the stomach. This practice regularly adhered to, will also promote a collateral advantage, by acting as a security against the too keen sharpening of appetite that tends to repletion in eating, and which sometimes produces results similar to those exhibited by a boa-constrictor after dining upon a whole buffalo, swallowed without the previous ceremony of carving! One should never dine so heartily as to be unfitted for the subsequent enjoyment of society, or of the lighter pursuits of literature. Deliberate and thorough mastication will more beneficially, and quite as pleasurably, prolong the enjoyments of the table, as a more hurried disposal of a large quantity of food. And really I do not know how the most rigid economist of time, or the most self-sacrificing devotee either of Mammon or of Literature, can more judiciously devote an hour of each day than to the single purpose of dining!
Happily for those whose self-respect does not always furnish the sustaining power requisite for the maintenance of a principle, fashion no longer requires of any man the use of even wine, much less of stronger beverages. And with reference to the use of all alcoholic stimulants, as well as of tobacco, I would remind you that those only who are not enslaved by appetite, are FREE! If you have acquired a liking for wine or tobacco, and would abjure either, or both, you will soon be convinced, by experiment, of the truth of Dr. Johnson's saying, of which, by the way, his own life furnished a striking illustration, that "abstinence is easier than temperance."
To prolong arguments against the habits of smoking and drinking, were a work of supererogation, here. I will advance but one, which may, possibly, possess the merit of novelty. Both have the effect, materially to limit our enjoyment of the presence and conversation of
"Heaven's last, best gift to man!"
I cannot better dismiss this important topic than by quoting the following passage from the writings of Sir Walter Raleigh:
"Except thou desire to hasten thy end, take this for a general rule—that thou never add any artificial heat to thy body by wine or spice, until thou find that time hath decayed thy natural heat; the sooner thou dost begin to help nature the sooner she will forsake thee, and leave thee to trust altogether to art."