PHYSICAL EDUCATION. 463 



boiled milk, and bread-pudding. Vegetable soups, baked beans, pota- 

 toes (baked or mashed), butter, biscuits, and apple-dumplings. 



General Rules. Avoid stimulants ; alcoholic and narcotic drinks, 

 tobacco, and all pungent spices ; be sparing in the use of animal food, 

 especially in summer-time ; in midsummer eat fruit with every meal ; 

 let unprepared food (fresh milk, fruits, etc.) form a part of your daily 

 fare ; of unprepared aliments as well as of all unspiced viands, the 

 most palatable are the most wholesome ; eat slowly and masticate 

 your food ; never eat if you have no appetite ; and finish your last 

 meal three hours before bedtime. 



As a dessert I will add a few of my favorite dietetic aphorisms : 

 An hour of exercise to every pound of food. We are not nourished 

 by what we eat, but by what we digest. Every hour you steal from 

 digestion will be reclaimed by indigestion. Beware of the wrath of a 

 patient stomach ! He who controls his appetite in regard to the qual- 

 ity of his food may safely indulge it in regard to quantity. The 

 oftener you eat, the oftener you will repent it. Dyspepsia is a poor 

 pedestrian ; walk at the rate of four miles an hour, and you will soon 

 leave her behind. The road to the rum-cellar leads through the cof- 

 fee-house. Abstinence from all stimulants, only, is easier than tem- 

 perance. There are worthier objects of charity than famine-sti'icken 

 nations that send their breadstuffs to the distillery. An e^g, is worth 

 a pound of meat ; a milch-cow, seven stall-fed oxen, Sleep is sweeter 

 after a fast-day than after a feast-day. For every meal you lose you 

 gain a better. 



How often should we eat is still a mooted question. For men in 

 a state of nature the answer would be simple enough ; but, consider- 

 ing our present artificial modes of life, I must say that the choice of 

 fixed hours is less important than the observation of the following 

 rule : Never eat till you have leisure to digest. For digestion requires 

 leisure ; we can not assimilate our food while the functional energy of 

 our system is engrossed by other occupations. After a hearty feed, 

 animals retire to a quiet hiding-place ; and the " after-dinner laziness," 

 the plea of our system for rest, should admonish us to imitate their 

 example. The idea that exercise after dinner promotes digestion is a 

 mischievous fallacy ; Jules Virey settled that question by a cruel but 

 conclusive experiment. He selected two curs of the same size, age 

 and general physique, made them keep a fast-day and treated them 

 the next morning to a square meal of potato-chips and cubes of fat 

 mutton, but, as soon as one of them had eaten his fill, he made the 

 other stop too, to make sure that they had both consumed the same 

 quantity. Dog No. 1 was then confined in a comfortable kennel, 

 while No. 2 had to run after the doctor's coach, not at a breathless rate 

 of speed, but at a fair, brisk trot, for two hours and a half. As soon 

 as they got home, the coach-dog and his comrade were slain and dis- 

 sected : the kennel-dog had completely digested his meal, while the 



