ir
shells. I only speak of the oyster incidentally, as one of the objects
toward which science has turned its attention, and I assert with the
utmost confidence that the time will come, unless science should get a
set-back, when the present hunting-case oyster will give place to the
open-face oyster, grafted on the octopus and big enough to feed a hotel.
Further than that, the oyster of the future will carry in a hip-pocket a
flask of vinegar, half a dozen lemons and two little Japanese bottles,
one of which will contain salt and the other pepper, and there will be
some way provided by which you can tell which is which. But are we
improving the oyster now? That is a question we may well ask ourselves.
Is this a healthy fat which we are putting on him, or is it bloat? And
what will be the result in the home-life of the oyster? We take him from
all domestic influences whatever in order to make a swell of him by our
modern methods, but do we improve his condition morally, and what is to
be the great final result on man?

The reader will see by the questions I ask that I am a true scientist.
Give me an overcoat pocket full of lower-case interrogation marks and a
medical report to run to, and I can speak on the matter of science and
advancement till Reason totters on her throne.

But food and oysters do not alone affect the great, pregnant future. Our
race is being tampered with not only by means of adulterations,
political combinations and climatic changes, but even our methods of
relaxation are productive of peculiar physical conditions, malformations
and some more things of the same kind.

Cigarette smoking produces a flabby and endogenous condition of the
optic nerve, and constant listening at a telephone, always with the same
ear, decreases the power of the other ear till it finally just stands
around drawing its salary, but actually refusing to hear anything.
Carrying an eight-pound cane makes a man lopsided, and the muscular and
nervous strain that is necessary to retain a single eyeglass in place
and keep it out of the soup, year after year, draws the mental stimulus
that should go to the thinker itself, until at last the mind wanders
away and forgets to come back, or becomes atrophied, and the great
mental strain incident to the work of pounding sand or coming in when it
rains is more than it is equal to.

Playing billiards, accompanied by the vicious habit of pounding on the
floor with the butt of the cue ever