tuous life of that country and time, the author no
doubt imagined to be the greatest absurdities conceivable in
reference to diet, but which, in the light of present civilization
are but the merest hygienic truths. A doctor had been called to a
gouty and fever-stricken patient. "Pray what is your ordinary diet?"
asked the physician.

"My usual food," replied the patient, "is broth and juicy meat."

"Broth and juicy meat!" cried the doctor, alarmed. "I do not wonder
to find you sick; such dishes are poisoned pleasures and snares that
luxury spreads for mankind, so as to ruin them the more
effectually.... How old are you, pray?"

"I am in my sixty-ninth year," replied the patient.

"Exactly," ... said the physician; "if you had drunk nothing else
than pure water all your life, and had been satisfied with simple
nourishment,--such as boiled apples for example,--you would not now
be tormented with the gout, and all your limbs would perform their
functions with ease."

Dr. Horace Bushnell says: "The child is taken when his training
begins in a state of naturalness as respects all the bodily tastes
and tempers, and the endeavour should be to keep him in that key, to
let no stimulation of excess or delicacy disturb the simplicity of
nature, and no sensual pleasure in the name of food become a want or
expectation of his appetite. Any artificial appetite begun is the
beginning of distemper, disease, and a general disturbance of
natural proportion. Nine tenths of the intemperate drinking begins,
not in grief and destitution, as we so often hear, but in vicious
feeding."

Always let the food be simply for nourishment--never more, never
less. Never should food be taken for its own sake, but for the sake
of promoting bodily and mental activity. Still less should the
peculiarities of food, its taste or delicacy ever become an object
in themselves, but only a means to make it good, pure, wholesome
nourishment; else in both cases the food destroys
health.--_Froebel._

Since what need mortals, save twain things alone,
Crushed grain (heaven's gift), and steaming water-draught?
Food nigh at hand, and Nature's aliment--
Of which no glut contents us.
Pampered taste hunts out device of other eatables.

--_Euripides._

FRAGMENTS & LEFT-OVER FOODS

Economy, one of t