PHYSICAL EDUCATION. 459 



sheep, and deer ^pay an occasional visit to the next salt-lick. The 

 carnivora digest their meat without salt ; our next relatives, the fru- 

 givorous four-handers, detest it. Not one of the countless tonics, cor- 

 dials, stimulants, pickles, and spices, which have become household 

 necessities of modern civilization, is ever touched by animals in a 

 state of nature. A famished wolf would shrink from a " deviled 

 gizzard." To children and frugivorous animals our pickles and pepper- 

 sauces are, on the whole, more offensive than meat, and therefore, 

 probably more injurious. To savages, too. In the summer of 1875 I 

 stood one evening near the quai'termaster's office at Fort Wingate, 

 New Mexico, when two Kiowa Indians applied for permission to water 

 their famished horses at the Government cistern, offering to accept 

 that boon in part payment of a load of brushwood which they pro- 

 posed to haul from the neighboring chaparral. The fellows looked 

 thirsty and hungry themselves, and, while the quartermaster ratified 

 the wood-bargain, one of the officers sent to his company quarters for 

 a lunch of such comestibles as the cooks might have on hand at that 

 time of the day. A trayful of "Government grub" was deposited 

 on the adjacent cord-wood platform, and the Indios pitched in with the 

 peculiar appetite of carnivorous nomads. A yard of commissary sau- 

 sage was accepted as a tough variety of jerked beef ; yeasted and 

 branless bread disappeared in quantities that would have confirmed 

 Dr. Graham's belief in natural depravity ; they sipped the cold coffee 

 and eyed it with a gleam of suspicion, but were reconciled by the dis- 

 covery of the saccharine sediment, and the cook was just going to 

 replenish their cups when the senior Kiowa helped himself to a vinegar 

 pickle, which he probably mistook for some sort of an off-color sugar- 

 plum. He tasted it, rose to his feet, and dashed the plate down with 

 a muttered execration, and then clutched the prop of the platform to 

 master his rising fury. Explanations followed, and a pound of brown 

 sugar was accepted as a peace-offering, but the children of Nature left 

 the post under the impression that they had been the victims of a 

 heartless practical joke. " D n their breechless souls, they don't know 

 what's good for them ! " was the cook's comment, which I should en- 

 dorse if his guests had been in need of a blister. A slice of a peppered 

 and allspiced vinegar pickle will blister your skin as quick as a plaster 

 of Spanish flies. The lady-friends of Dio Lewis have promised us an 

 " Art of Cookery for Total Abstainers," and, if the book should cor- 

 respond to the title, I would suggest a motto : " No spice but hunger ; 

 no stimulant but exercise." 



By avoiding pungent condiments we also obviate the principal 

 cause of gluttony. It is well known that the admirers of lager-beer do 

 not drink it for the sake of its nutritive properties, but as a medium 

 of stimulation, and I hold that nine out of ten gluttons swallow their 

 peppered ragoHts for the same purpose. Only natural appetites have 

 natural limits. Two quarts of water Avill satisfy the normal thirst of 



