DIET. 239 
Then, instead of a hot, fiery task, disastrous to the temper, and 
comfort of the cook, it will be a recreative amusement for ladies 
to prepare the daily dinner. 
“You need only turn a handle, and the soup is boiling hot, 
Appetising odours rising from the hospitable pot. 
Turn another, and the salmon in its mayonnaise lies fair ; 
Press a button, and the mutton, with the currant jelly’s there; 
Press again, and sweets, and entrées will at once appear in sight, - 
And you'll fall to, on them all too, with a first-class appetite.” 
A diet of lean meat exclusively will build up the tissues, but 
if nothing else be taken, then the fat already stored up in the 
body will be fed upon, and consumed, so that the person will 
become thinner. Bismarck, by the advice of his physician, 
reduced his bulk in this way without any loss of energy, or any 
sense of illness. Again, we have to depend upon what we eat 
and drink for mental power, and intellectual capabilities. ‘‘ So 
many factors,” says the Century Invalid Cookery Book, “ enter 
into the make-up of a thought, that it cannot be said that any 
particular kind of food will ultimately produce a poem; but 
of this we may be sure, that the best work, the noblest thoughts, 
the most original ideas, will not come from «a dyspeptic, underfed, 
or im any way ill-nourished individual.’”’ Swift, as a writer, was 
fully alive to this fact. ‘‘I wish you a merry Lent,’ quoth he, 
in a letter to Stella (March 5th, 1711). “I hate Lent: I hate 
different diets, and furmity, and butter, and herb porridge, and 
sour devout faces of people who only put on religion for seven 
weeks.” Not that a highly elaborate diet is essential for vigour 
of brain. “ Hominis cibus utilissimus simplex,” said Pliny 
authoritatively. q 
as 
*“* Nam varie res] 
Ut noceant homini credas. memor illius esce 
Que simplex tibi sederit.” 
* For, divers meats do hurt ; remember how 
When to one dish confined thou healthier wax't than now.” =, 
Horace Walpole, writing from Norfolk (1743) to his friend John 
Chute, put the matter thus: ‘‘ Indeed, my dear Sir, you certainly 
did not use to be stupid ; and till you give me more substantial 
proof that you are so, I shall not believe it. As for your 
temperate diet, and milk, bringing about such a metamorphosis, 
I hold it impossible. I have such lamentable proofs every day 
before my eyes of the stupefying qualities of ale, beer, and wine, 
