eds, and while they plant
the rose in the ground a corresponding rose blooms in their own cheek.

But we need another proclamation of emancipation. The human locomotive goes
too fast. Cylinder, driving-boxes, rock-shaft, truck and valve-gear need to
"slow up." Oh! that some strong hand would unloose the burdens from our
over-tasked American life, that there might be fewer bent shoulders, and
pale cheeks, and exhausted lungs, and quenched eyes, the law, and medicine,
and theology less frequently stopped in their glorious progress, because of
the hot axle!

CHAPTER IX.

BEEFSTEAK FOR MINISTERS.

There have been lately several elaborate articles remarking upon what they
call the lack of force and fire in the clergy. The world wonders that, with
such a rousing theme as the gospel, and with such a grand work as saving
souls, the ministry should ever be nerveless. Some ascribe it to lack of
piety, and some to timidity of temperament. We believe that in a great
number of cases it is from the lack of nourishing food. Many of the
clerical brotherhood are on low diet. After jackets and sacks have been
provided for the eight or ten children of the parsonage, the father and
mother must watch the table with severest economy. Coming in suddenly upon
the dinner-hour of the country clergyman, the housewife apologizes for what
she calls "a picked-up" dinner, when, alas! it is nearly always picked up.

Congregations sometimes mourn over dull preaching when themselves are to
blame. Give your minister more beefsteak and he will have more fire. Next
to the divine unction, the minister needs blood; and he cannot make that
out of tough leather. One reason why the apostles preached so powerfully
was that they had healthy food. Fish was cheap along Galilee, and this,
with unbolted bread, gave them plenty of phosphorus for brain food. These
early ministers were never invited out to late suppers, with chicken salad
and doughnuts. Nobody ever embroidered slippers for the big foot of Simon
Peter, the fisherman preacher. Tea parties, with hot waffles, at ten
o'clock at night, make namby-pamby ministers; but good hours and
substantial diet, that furnish nitrates for the muscles, and phosphates for
the brain, and carbonates for the whole frame, prepare a man for effective
work. When the water is low, the mill-wheel goes slow; but a full race, and
how fast the grists are ground! In a man the arteries are the mill-race and
the brain the whee