LD Grandfather Iden always dined alone in the parlour, with his housekeeper to wait on him; they were just bringing in his food. The family and visitors had their meals in a separate and much more comfortable apartment in another part of the house, which was large. Sometimes, as a great favour and special mark of approval, the old Pacha would invite you to eat with him.
Amaryllis, though anxious to please him, hesitated, not only because of the smoke, but because she knew he always had pork for dinner.
The rich juices of roast pork sustained his dry and withered frame—it was a sort of Burgundy of flesh to him. As the good wine of Burgundy fills the blood with iron and strengthens the body, so the rich juice of the pork seemed to supply the oil necessary to keep the sinews supple and to prevent the cartilages from stiffening.
The scientific people say that it is the ossification of the cartilages—the stiffening of the firmer tissues—that in time interferes with the processes of life. The hinges rust, as if your tricycle had been left out in the rain for a week—and the delicate watchwork of the human frame will not run.
If suppleness could only be maintained there is no reason why it should not continue to work for a much longer period, for a hundred and fifty, two hundred years—as long as you fancy. But nothing has yet been devised to keep up the suppleness.
Grandfather Iden found the elixir of life in roast pork. The jokers of Woolhorton—there are always jokers, very clever they think themselves—considered the reason it suited him so well was because of the pig-like obstinacy of his disposition.
Anything more contrary to common sense than for an old man of ninety to feed on pork it would be hard to discover—so his friends said.
"Pork," said the physician, had down from London to see him on one occasion, "pork is the first on the list of indigestible articles of food. It takes from six to eight hours for the gastric apparatus to reduce its fibres. The stomach becomes overloaded—acidity is the result; nightmares, pains, and innumerable ills are the consequence. The very worst thing Mr. Iden could eat."
"Hum," growled the family doctor, a native of Woolhorton, when he heard of this. "Hum!" low in his throat, like an irate bulldog. If in the least excited, like most other country folk, he used the provincial pronunciation. "Hum! A' have lived twenty years on pork. Let'n yet it!"