he witness-box. Most
assuredly I do believe that body and mind are much influenced by
the kind of food habitually depended upon. I am persuaded that a too
exclusively porcine diet gives a bristly character to the beard
and hair, which is borrowed from the animal whose tissues these
stiff-bearded compatriots of ours have too largely assimilated. I can
never stray among the village people of our windy capes without now
and then coming upon a human being who looks as if he had been split,
salted, and dried, like the salt-fish which has built up his arid
organism. If the body is modified by the food which nourishes it, the
mind and character very certainly will be modified by it also. We know
enough of their close connection with each other to be sure of that,
without any statistical observations to prove it.

Do you really want to know "whether oatmeal is preferable to pie as an
American national food"? I suppose the best answer I can give to your
question is to tell you what is my own practice. Oatmeal in the
morning, as an architect lays a bed of concrete to form a base for his
superstructure. Pie when I can get it; that is, of the genuine sort,
for I am not patriotic enough to think very highly of the article
named after the Father of his Country, who was first in war, first in
peace,--not first in pies, according to my standard.

There is a very odd prejudice against pie as an article of diet. It is
common to hear every form of bodily degeneracy and infirmity attributed
to this particular favorite food. I see no reason or sense in it.
Mr. Emerson believed in pie, and was almost indignant when a
fellow-traveller refused the slice he offered him. "Why, Mr.________,"
said be, "what is pie made for!" If every Green Mountain boy has not
eaten a thousand times his weight in apple, pumpkin, squash, and mince
pie, call me a dumpling. And Colonel Ethan Allen was one of them,--Ethan
Allen, who, as they used to say, could wrench off the head of a wrought
nail with his teeth.

If you mean to keep as well as possible, the less you think about your
health the better. You know enough not to eat or drink what you have
found does not agree with you. You ought to know enough not to expose
yourself needlessly to draughts. If you take a "constitutional," walk
with the wind when you can, and take a closed car against it if you can
get one. Walking against the wind is one of the most dangerous kinds of
exposure, if you are sensitive to c