PHYSICAL EDUCATION. 465 



or six. It all depends on training, and in no other respect is the human 

 system so plastic to the influence of habit. The Rev. Mr. Moffat tells 

 us that the Gonaque Hottentots are noways incommoded by a five 

 days' fast, and get old on an average of four meals a week. The 

 Greeks and Romans during the prime of their republics contented them- 

 selves with one meal a day ; Claude Bernard recommends two, but his 

 countrymen generally eat three ; their German neighbors four ; the 

 East-Germans even five : breakfast, second breakfast {zweites Fruh- 

 stilck), dinner, Vesperbrot, and supper, to which supper the Vienna 

 burghers actually superadd a JVacht-bissel a " night-lunch," of cold 

 potato-salad with bread and Wiirst, and often with a mug of beer 

 " for the stomach's sake " ! I get along comfortably with a meal and 

 a half ; so does my grand-uncle, an octogenarian, who still masticates 

 his bread with a full set of unbought teeth. Two, or one and two 

 halves, should be enough for any man. The lightest breakfast is the 

 best buckwheat-cakes with a little honey or apple-butter, and a glass 

 of milk, or a cup of chocolate, if you must take " something warm." 

 Chocolate possesses nutritive properties, which tea and coffee per se 

 are totally devoid of. I never use it, but I believe it is non-stimulating. 

 Or chew a crust of stale bread, the best dentifrice and a useful absorb- 

 ent, good for acidity of the stomach. At noon take a glass of milk 

 and a couple of biscuits, or in summer a couple of ripe pears or peaches ; 

 they will keep you cool during the post-meridian heat and do you 

 more good than a cocktail lunch, Never keep a pocket-flask. Don't 

 stay with flagons ; better comfort with apples, if you can not wait till 

 five. School-children should pass their recess on the playgroimd. A 

 biscuit and a pocketful of apples will satisfy the temporary demands 

 of the stomach ; and, if they have munched up their comestibles in the 

 course of the morning, as boys are apt to do, they will find it far easier 

 to forego their noonday lunch altogether than to resist the insidious 

 somnolence which would dull their wits after a regular dinner, and 

 often makes the afternoon lesson a protracted struggle between nature 

 and duty. 



But at the principal meal they should eat their fill. Let them 

 pitch in, without fear of dangerous consequences unless your landlord 

 charges by the plateful. Children, like monkeys, have a way of dal- 

 lying with their food if they are full picking a crumb here and there, 

 or mumbling their apples without using their teeth. Make them get 

 up if you notice such symptoms, or, better, entice them away by im- 

 provising some out-door or up-stairs amusement. But I repeat, never 

 press them to eat for principle's sake not even your young visitors ; 

 they are not likely to go to bed hungry if your me77u comprises such 

 items as baked apples or bread-pudding and sweet milk. 



Jean Jacques Rousseau holds that intemperate habits are mostly 

 acquired in early boyhood, when blind deference to social precedents 

 is apt to overcome our natural antipathies, and that those who have 



VOL. XVIII. 30 



