454 MEALS MEDICINAL. 
With its smile of welcome, 
Its holy voice of prayer, 
It forgeth heavenly armour 
Against the hosts of care.” 
As to the English “country Sunday,” and its sub- 
stantial meat and drink at the mid-day meal after morning 
service, especially with the Chapel-goers, Richard Jefferies has 
told in his eloquent Saxon speech (Field and Hedgerow, one 
of his last essays): ‘‘ There is no man so feasted as the Chapel 
pastor. His tall, round body, and his broad, red face might 
be taken for the outward man of a sturdy farmer, and he likes 
his pipe, and glass. He dines every Sunday, and at least once 
a week besides, at the house of one of his staunch supporters. 
It is said that once at such a dinner (in a Sussex yeoman’s 
homestead), after a large plateful of black currant pudding, 
the pastor, finding there was still some juice left, lifted the plate 
to his mouth, and carefully licked it all round; the hostess 
hastened to offer a spoon, but he declined, thinking that his 
way was much the best for gathering up the essence of the fruit. 
So simple were his manners, he needed no spoon; and, indeed, 
if we look back, the apostles managed without forks, and put 
their fingers in the dish.” 
The ancient Greeks had as their meals acratisma (breakfast), 
deipnon, or aristin (as early dinner), and darpee (supper, or late 
dinner) ; their hesperisma corresponded to our five o'clock tea. 
The Romans had pentaculum (breakfast), prandium (luncheon), 
and cana (dinner). The old Low Latin term for the noonday 
meal was merenda, as suggesting the notion of food to be earned 
before it was enjoyed. So in Friar Bacon’s poem, A Prophesie, 
(1604) it stands declared that “in the good old days he that 
wrought not till he sweated was held unworthy of his meat.” 
The modern luncheon, or nuncheon, was the archaic prandium, 
or under-meat, displaced by our breakfast, but which then came 
between the noontide dinner, and the evening supper. Nowadays 
to some persons, fond of outdoor daily life, and sunshine, and 
the beauties of nature, a mid-day solid meal is distasteful, and 
repugnant. Thus pronounces Elizabeth (in the Solitary Summer, ) 
when called from the green fields, and the intellectual enjoyment 
of life in the fresh country air, to the heavy, substantial family 
luncheon within doors: “ Luncheon is a snare of the tempter, 
and I would fain try to sail by it like Ulysses (tied to the mast) 
