acid ghouls at their scanty
board.... Bread, milk, bran, turnips, onions, potatoes, apples, yield so
much starch, so much sugar, so much nitrogen, so much nutriment! Enough!
to live is the _end_ of eating, not to be pleased and made better with
objects, odors, flavors. Therefore welcome a few articles of food in
violation of every fine sensibility. Stuff in and masticate the crudest
forms of eatables,--bad-cooking, bad-looking, bad-smelling, bad-tasting,
and worse-feeling,--down with them hastily,--and then, between your
headaches and gastric spasms, pride yourself upon virtues and temperance
not possessed by any student in the gastronomic school of Epicurus! Let
it be perpetually remembered to the credit of this apostle of
alimentation and vitativeness with temperance, that, in his religious
system, eating was a 'sacramental' process, and not a physical
indulgence merely, as the ignorant allege."

Bravo for the seer of Poughkeepsie! In the above extracts, quoted from
his "Thinker," he has vindicated the much maligned Epicurus better than
his disciples Lucretius and Gassendi have done, and by some mysterious
process (he calls it psychometry) he seems to know more of the old
Athenian, and to have a more intimate knowledge of his doctrines, than
can be found in Brucker or Ritter.

When it is considered how our mental states may be modified by what we
eat and drink, the importance of good _ingesta_, both fluid and solid,
becomes apparent. Among the good things which attached Charles Lamb to
this present life was his love of the delicious juices of meats and
fishes.

But these things are preliminary, although not impertinent to the main
subject, which is Quincy Market. After having perambulated the principal
markets of the other leading American cities, I must pronounce it
_facile princeps_ among New-World markets. A walk through it is equal to
a dose of dandelion syrup in the way of exciting an appetite for one's
dinner. Such a walk is tonic and medicinal, and should be prescribed to
dyspeptic patients. To the hungry, penniless man such a walk is like the
torture administered to the old Phrygian who blabbed to mortals the
secrets of the celestial banquets. Autumn is the season in which to
indulge in a promenade through Quincy Market, after the leaf has been
nipped by the frost and crimson-tinted, when the morning air is cool and
bracing. Then the stalls and precincts of the chief Boston market are a
goodly spectacle. At