560 MEALS MEDICINAL. 
“Then said Daniel to Melzar (the steward), whom the prince 
of the eunuchs had set over Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and 
Azariah, ‘ Prove thy servants, I beseech thee, ten days, and let 
them give us pulse to eat, and water to drink; then let our 
countenances be looked upon before thee, and the countenance 
of the children that eat of the portion of the King’s meat: and 
as thou seest, deal with thy servants.’ So he consented to them: 
in this matter, and proved them ten days. And at the end of 
ten days their countenances appeared fairer, and fatter in flesh, 
than all the children which did eat the portion of the King’s 
meat’ (Daniel i. wv. 11-17). 
In Germany Peas are thought good for many complaints, 
especially for wounds, and bruises. They best suit persons 
who take plenty of active outdoor exercise. The skins of 
parched Peas when eaten cooked are apt to remain undigested, 
and to be passed in the excrements. Pease made into puddings 
is eaten by the lower classes of most towns, being bought ready 
prepared at the cooks’ shops, a portion thereof wrapped in 
paper for a penny. In the clever Book of Nonsense (1862) it 
stands related : 
“There was an old person of Dean 
Who dined on one pea, and one bean ; 
‘ For,’ he said, ‘ more than that 
Would make me too fat,’ 
That cautious old person of Dean.” 
Less nourishing satisfaction is got out of the pulses than from 
suitable animal food by persons who are not robust, or who do 
not gain their bread by hard bodily work. Lord Tennyson 
found such to be the case in his instance, and wrote to this effect 
as his individual experience (in his dedication of the poem 
Tiresias, to Edward Fitzgerald, a vegetarian), telling dis- 
appointedly about meat-abstainers : 
““ Who live on meal, and milk, and grass ; 
And once for ten long weeks I tried 
: Your table of Pythagoras, 
And seem’d at first ‘a thing enskied’ 
(As Shakespeare has it): ‘ airy light 
To float above the ways of men’; 
Then fell from that half-spiritual height 
Until I tasted flesh again, 
One night when earth was winter black, 
And all the heavens were flashed in frost, 
And on me, half asleep, came back 
That wholesome heat the blood had lost.” 
