466 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



passed that period in safety have generally escaped the danger of 

 temptation. The same holds good of other dietetic abuses. If a 

 child's natural aversion to vice has never been willfully perverted, the 

 time will come when his welfare may be intrusted to the safe-keeping 

 of his protective instincts. You need not fear that he will swerve from 

 the path of health when his simple habits, sanctioned by Nature and 

 inclination, have acquired the additional strength of long practice. 

 When the age of blind deference is passed, vice is generally too unat- 

 tractive to be very dangerous. " Why make yourself the slave of such 

 a degrading habit ? " says Count Zinzendorf, in his " Hirtenbrief " ; " it 

 is so easy never to begin ! " I go further. I say it is difficult to begin. 

 Nature is not neutral on a point of such importance. Between virtue 

 and vice she has erected a bulwark which she intended to last from 

 birth to death. We need not strengthen that bulwark. We need not 

 guard it with anxious care ; it will stand the ordinary wear and tear 

 of life. All we have to do is to save ourselves the extraordinary 

 trouble of breaking it down. 



Pure joys never pall ; uniformity is uniform happiness if the even 

 tenor of our way is the way of Nature. And Nature herself will guide 

 our steps if the exigence of abnormal circumstances should require a 

 deviation from the beaten path. Remedial instincts are not confined 

 to the lower animals ; man has his full share of them ; the self-regu- 

 lating power of the human system is as wonderful in the variety as in 

 the simplicity of its resources. Have you ever observed the weather- 

 wisdom of the black bindweed ? how its flowers open to the morning 

 sun and close at the approach of the noontide glare ; how its tendrils 

 expand their spirals in a calm, but contract and cling, as with hands, to 

 their support when the storm-wind sweeps the woods ? With the same 

 certainty our dietetic instincts respond to the varying demands of our 

 daily life. Without the aid of art, without the assistance of our own 

 experience, they even adapt themselves to the exigencies of our ab- 

 normal social conditions, and our interference alone often prevents 

 them from counteracting the tendency of dire abuses. 



Summer brings no repose to the slaves of Mammon, but dull head- 

 aches and the stomach's imperative demand for rest convince even the 

 unwilling that intricate arithmetical problems and 90 Fahr. are incom- 

 patible with digestion ; and I ascribe it to the logic of those gastric 

 arguments that' bankers and brokers now close their shops at 3 p. m. ; 

 and that business men generally avoid repletion in the middle of the 

 day. " Cheese is gold in the morning, silver at noon, and lead at 

 night," says a mediaeval proverb ; but the effects of those horrid cheese 

 and porter breakfasts of Queen Anne's time satisfied our grandams that 

 rotten curd and fermented (i. e., putrid) barley-broth are always lead, 

 except to those who employ the hygienic philosopher's stone active 

 and long-continued out-door exercise. After recovery from an exhaust- 

 ing sickness especially if you decide to promote that recovery by 



