dietetic Rousseau proclaims a return to very first
principles by the abolition of cooking.

Another attacks the harmless and blushing tomato, and lays
at its door the modern increase of cancer, insanity, and a
hundred kindred evils; while Mrs. Rohrer has gently but
firmly to be restrained whenever she hears the mild-eyed
potato mentioned.

There is almost an equally astonishing Babel when one comes
to listen to the various opinions as to the amount of food
required. Eighteen grave and reverend doctors assure us that
overeating is the prevalent dietetic sin of the century,
while the remainder of the two dozen are equally positive
that the vast majority of their patients are underfed. One
man preaches the gospel of dignified simplicity on one meal
a day and one clean collar a week, while the lean and
learned Fletcher declares that if we only keep on
masticating our one mouthful of food long enough we shall
delude the stomach into magnifying it into ten, and can dine
sumptuously on a menu-card and a biscuit.

Fortunately, when it comes to practise, philosophers,
reformers, and doctors alike have about as much influence
here as they have over conduct in other realms--and that is
next to none at all. The man in the street follows his
God-given instincts and plods peacefully along to his three
square meals a day, consisting of anything he can find in
the market, and just as much of it as he can afford, with
special preference for rich meats, fats, and sugars.

Instinct Far Superior to Reason.

Here, as everywhere, instinct is far superior to reason, and
a breakfast diet of sausage and buckwheat cakes with maple
syrup and strong coffee has carried the white man half
around the world; while one of salads and cereals, washed
down with a post-prandial subterfuge, would leave him
stranded, gasping, in the first ditch he came to.

All the basal problems of dietetics were, by the mercy of
Heaven, settled long ago in the farmhouse kitchen, in the
commissary department of the army in the field, in the
cook's galley amidships, and in the laboratory.

There is little more room for difference of opinion upon
them than there is about the coaling of engines. Simply a
matter of size of boiler and fire-box, the difference in
heating power and ash between Welsh and A